I was a hardworking lawyer approaching 50 and absolutely outraged that I wasn't a published writer. I love to write. I write all the time. Some people enjoy reading my writing. And I felt like my day job was sucking the hope out of my future.
So I made a plan. First, take a break that would help me reinvent myself as a writer. I took improv. Improv is like really fun therapy. Improv led to stand up. Stand up is like going to an amusement park at midnight in your 40's. I LOVED the ride but I couldn't manage the schedule.
But now I had a ton of material. My stand up writing was funny, at least to me. What to do with a ton of funny, fast material?
I sketched a girl who looked like me and gave her my punchlines. Then I scanned her and emailed her to anyone with an email address. And then I sketched more girls and then boys and then dogs. I added my punchlines to the sketches. The more sketches I had, the more punchlines popped into my head.
Fast forward to fifty. I got my first daily four-panel comic strip syndicated and then my second property, a single-panel cartoon. And I got my first licensing deal.
I can't draw very well. I never took a class, which is obvious. But I had creative energy oozing out of me (sorry, that sounds kind of gross). I had to choose: be creative or be miserable. I chose to be creative and it turned out that I had an audience.
Life is definitely far more fun when you're living your dream instead of just dreaming a life.
It sounds cliche (and it's stolen from Nike), but just do it. And do it with determination, purpose and discipline. The worst that can happen is that you create something you love.