I'm certainly no counselor, but I believe in order to be a good one you need to be able to empathize with the human condition and understand your own affliction with it more than give advice. I prefer talking to someone who not only listens, but that allows me to acknowledge my shortcomings by trading them. It's the camaraderie aspect I suppose.

And yes, fireworks! Explosions of color and clouds sulfur just beneath the surface, waiting to blow. My mind is on fire and right wrist inflamed, yargh! Such is the brilliant brightness of great ideas swathed in the stink of persistence. Perfect theory roughened by reality, shaping up by raw, plodding process. I hold my own counsel to the current project and its unfolding results, but I will not give up. Time to go, go, go!
Age does mean something, to me. The approaching mark, third notch in decades on earth, represents a silent death knoll to meandering. It isn't about getting older and dying, to me it's about what I've done and where I'm going. For very few things now were worth it in retrospect, and I blame simple cowardice on most of my failings. Fear of anything, everything, and baseline satiation in life-bleeding offices, tasks, and jobs. Working to make ends meet, phaw! Competitive hunger lurks within, struggling through uncertainty and a resistance to perceived selfishness. I carry my own support system, I have no reasons left to be afraid, only excuses.