Todd’s Take: An Open Letter to Me on My 50th Birthday [PHOTOS]

First let me begin by saying a huge "THANK YOU" to all who have already reached out to me to wish me a happy birthday today (December 28)!

Like some of you that have already preceded me and get non-stop junk mail from AARP, today I enter my sixth decade on this big blue marble and join "Club 50". I have to be perfectly honest here... I've kind of been struggling with it a bit. Turning 30 was a drag, 40 was a breeze, and now the big 5-0. A half-century. More days behind me, likely, than ahead. It's kind of daunting to me. Is it because I already suffer clinical anxiety in general or because this past calendar year has already zapped so much life out of all of us? I don't know for sure but I do know that if I look back on my life even 20 years ago I could NEVER have imagined how blessed I would be at the age of 50.

With that, I'm sharing a letter to me at 50 from 30-year-old me:

"Hey, man,

Chill.

Remember all those times you should have died or been killed? Like the time you and Brian King were driving home from Seattle after a Tom Petty concert in a blizzard on Snoqualmie Pass when your engine stalled and your starter was out so you had to push your car off of the interstate seconds before a semi would have crushed you to smithereens? Yeah, THAT time! Well, you didn't. And you should be glad.

Here's why: