Adapt or Die: The Biological Imperative for Aging Creatives

[24 November 2006 - Gamasutra] For more than 3 billion years, biological evolution has guided the colonization of our planet by living organisms. Evolution’s rules are simple: creatures that adapt to threats and master the evolutionary game thrive; those that don’t become extinct. Just how much “mastery” has been involved in my ability to dodge an evolutionary bullet is certainly an open question but none the less, I am still in the game well beyond my projected “use by date” and at 62 years old, show no signs of “going bad” anytime soon. My point being this: to avoid self-extinction, we must develop some level of awareness that we are at risk in the first place, some way to "change the nature of the outcome." The bargain is just that simple: if we do, we survive, if we don't, we disappear. So we elder statesmen must find a way stay relevant, and if it does not exist yet, create it. Adapt or die becomes much more meaningful when you realize that the work you have taken on has lost its momentum and that the necessary internal support continues evaporating at an alarming rate. This, then, is my humble recitation of fact concerning my own evolutionary trajectory. A trajectory that has been, and I am being generous here, erratic, convoluted and not without some level of discomfort and distress. More