Permission to Start Over — It’s Never Too Late
Life’s Funny…Until It’s Not™ — Episode 5 | By Deb LaMotta | R2RB Network
I want to talk about something I think a lot of us carry around quietly. That dream you haven’t let yourself start. Or the one you started — and then quietly put away.
I know that feeling. Because I’ve lived it more than once.
The Antique Shop Idea I Gave Up On
I had so many ideas for retirement. I was going to open my own small retail shop selling antiques, maybe a mix of antiques and local crafters’ goods. Or at the very least, rent a little space somewhere and make it mine. I had already started collecting pieces for it. I had the vision.
And then, at the end of last year, I made a decision. It wasn’t going to happen. Not anytime soon. So I gave the pieces away.
It felt like defeat. Not just disappointment. Defeat. Like I had let myself down. Again.
Because here’s the thing I’ve had to face about myself: I have started and stopped a lot of ideas over the years. And for a long time, I told myself it was circumstances. Life got in the way. Things changed. And sometimes that was true.
But if I’m really honest? A lot of times, I talked myself out of it before I even got started. Because if I never really started — if I always had a good excuse for why it didn’t happen — then I never had to face what felt like failure. No one could say I’d failed at something if I’d never truly tried.
I turned 67 in April. And I know plenty of people who have started brand-new careers, launched new businesses, and gone back to school — at my age and older. So I’m not going to tell you that age is the problem. It isn’t.
The problem was that I didn’t believe in myself enough to risk being seen trying.
That is the truth.
The Wall
You may know that I am the founder of R2RB Network — Reel 2 Reel Broadcasting — an independent online broadcasting platform. Starting it was my idea. I had no idea if it would actually take. I learned as I went, made mistakes, collaborated with others, and eventually found myself running it on my own.
And you may also know that I almost shut it down.
I had been through two family losses. A cancer scare. I put R2RB on hiatus while I got through all of that. And during that last month of the hiatus, I was sitting with a real decision: do I come back and keep building this — or do I walk away?
I remember the moment it hit me. Like walking face-first into a wall. Wham.
I had run out of excuses. I had the time. I had retired. I had already restructured my shows, so I wasn’t overwhelmed. And I still had people — residents at R2RB — who had been with me since the beginning, who still believed in what we were building together.
If I walked away, I wasn’t just stepping back from a business. I was starting something, again, and not finishing it. Again.
So I peeled myself off that wall.
And something happened that I hadn’t felt before — a quiet kind of confidence. A little scary, yes. But different.
I decided to continue with R2RB. And more than that — I got clear on what I wanted R2RB to actually be. I sat down and put it in writing. And I found the words that felt true:
R2RB — Where Independent Voices Build Legacy.
Not a network about numbers. A network where independent voices are respected, thought-provoking, and where people want to come and see what the buzz is about.
What I Want You to Sit With
Even if R2RB fails someday — which can happen to any business — I haven’t failed. Because I took the risk of seeing it through. That’s already a win. Whatever happens from here, I’m walking away with knowledge, friendships, and experiences that could never be taken from me.
The day I almost gave up on myself and R2RB? I remember it. And I remember the feeling when I said — out loud, to myself — no. I am not giving up.
That moment belongs to me.
Getting older is hard enough on its own. And I don’t think society makes it any easier for those of us who are 55 and up. We become invisible in the media. People walk past us without seeing us. Seniors in this country don’t get the same respect they receive in other parts of the world. And so many people in our community are struggling financially in retirement.
But here’s what I know: we have so much more to give. We have a perspective that can’t be taught. We have resilience that only comes from having actually lived through things. We have dreams that haven’t disappeared — they’ve just been waiting.
So whatever that thing is for you — the shop you wanted to open, the book you’ve been meaning to write, the class you keep meaning to sign up for, the idea that keeps coming back no matter how many times you push it away —
You have permission. Not from me. From yourself. You’ve always had it.
I’ll never say never again about that antique shop, by the way. I’ve learned my lesson on that one.
Food for Thought: Meet Dennis Young
Before I introduce you to someone special, let me ask you something.
What did you love? Not what you’re good at. Not what paid the bills. What did you love doing — that somewhere along the way, you just… stopped?
Maybe life got in the way. Maybe things got busy. Maybe you told yourself you’d get back to it someday, and someday just never came.
I think a lot of us in the 55-plus community are sitting with that question right now. And I think a lot of us answer it the same way. I can’t. I don’t have the time. It’s too late.
Well, I’d like to introduce you to someone who has zero patience for that answer.
His name is Dennis Young. He’s a Delaware artist and the owner of Mo’zArt Gallery and Studio in Historic Old New Castle — right on the corner of Second Street, with the old courthouse sitting right across the way.
Dennis went to college for pre-med. He went to medical school. He built a psychiatric practice and ran it for 40 years. And somewhere in the middle of all of that — the school, the practice, the family — he put down his brushes.
For 30 years, he didn’t paint. Nothing. Not a thing.
Then, about 18 years ago, he saw a small ad in the local paper for adult classes at the high school. The kind of ad most of us scroll right past. Guitar lessons. Ballroom dancing. Painting.
Dennis signed up for the painting class. And boom — it all came back. Just like that. He’s been making up for lost time ever since.
Now here’s the part I love. Dennis is a psychiatrist. He spent 40 years telling his patients: Don’t retire without a plan. He retired without a plan.
A few months into retirement — waking up every morning asking himself what day it was and what he was going to do with it — the man who owned the building on Second Street called him up and said: The space is coming up for rent. Do you want it?
Dennis said yes.
In April of 2018, at 70 years old, he opened Mo’zArt Gallery. He named it after himself, sort of — his wife’s nickname for him is Mo. Mo’zArt. Catchy. Very him.
Delaware Today Magazine named Mo’zArt Gallery Best in Upstate Delaware for 2024.
When people come into the gallery and say I can’t paint, Dennis stops them before they finish the sentence.
“Don’t say I can’t. Don’t ever say that again.”
He compares learning to paint to learning to drive. Nobody got behind the wheel the first time and drove smoothly. Now you eat a taco, check your mirrors, and don’t even think about it. You just do it. Painting is the same. You start where you are. You keep going. You get better.
That’s the whole philosophy. Right there.
When I went to meet Dennis at the gallery, I honestly thought it would just be a meet-and-greet — the kind of first conversation I have with guests before we schedule the actual interview. So when we sat down and started talking, I did what any prepared broadcaster would do: I hit record on my phone and winged it.
When I listened back, let’s just say I had made every mistake in the book. The audio was rough. I almost scrapped the whole thing. But then I remembered something Dennis said during our conversation: we learn by our mistakes. And if that’s not this entire episode in one sentence, I don’t know what is.
With a lot of patience and the talented hands of my good friend Tom McElman — who you know from Sounds from the Basement here on R2RB — the audio was cleaned up as well as it could be. I started recording interviews with women entrepreneurs years ago, and it wasn’t pretty then either. But I learned. And I kept going.
Dennis — thank you. For your time, your story, and for reminding all of us that it is never too late to pick up the brush, or whatever it is we put down. You can find Dennis and see his work at dennisyoungarts.com.
What I’m Learning
Dennis Young put down his brushes for thirty years. Thirty years. And when he finally picked them back up, it all came back.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. Because I have my own version of that story — smaller scale, no gallery, no Delaware Today award — but the same uncomfortable truth underneath it.
I want to talk about routines. Specifically, my complicated relationship with them.
I have a keyboard. I don’t sit down to practice every day. I’m a writer — and while I do write something every single day, sitting down for my personal essays for publication someday? That doesn’t happen every day either. There’s always something that pulls me in another direction.
For a long time, that bothered me. Because the advice is always the same: show up every day. Build the habit. Daily practice is everything. And I kept measuring myself against that standard and coming up short.
But here’s what I’ve come back to, especially since returning to R2RB after my hiatus.
My goal was never to be perfect at the routine. My goal was not to quit.
That sounds simple. It isn’t. Not quitting means coming back to the keyboard after a week away without deciding you’ve failed. It means returning to an essay you haven’t touched in two weeks and picking up the thread instead of abandoning it. It means relaunching a show you love after life pulled you away from it — and not letting the gap become the ending.
The one routine I’ve been faithful to since coming back is my social media. Every week, the posts go up. Monday Musings, Wednesday Wisdom — they’re there. And I know why I’ve been able to stick with that one: because without visibility, R2RB doesn’t exist. No visibility, no audience. No audience, no show. The stakes keep me showing up.
But the keyboard, the essays — those are for me. And maybe things that are just for us require a different kind of commitment. Not daily. Just faithful.
Not quitting. That’s the goal. That’s still the goal.
Before You Go
If you’ve read this far, I think somewhere in this post you recognized yourself. In the antique shop I gave up on. Dennis putting down his brushes for thirty years. Me hitting record on my phone and hoping for the best.
We’ve all got a version of that story.
What stopped you probably wasn’t time. It probably wasn’t money. It probably wasn’t even circumstances. You didn’t want to be seen trying and coming up short. So you protected yourself by never really starting. And if you never really started, you never really failed.
I understand that. I lived that. I’m still working my way out of it.
Some of you are carrying a lot right now. You’re caregiving for someone you love. You’re navigating health issues nobody prepared you for. You’re figuring out finances in a retirement that doesn’t look the way you thought it would. And when I say “just start something new,” I know that can land like a tone-deaf suggestion when you’re running on empty.
Life is heavy. It gets heavier as we get older in ways nobody warns you about.
This is what Dennis reminded me of. You don’t have to overhaul your whole life. You don’t have to show up every single day. You just have to not quit.
Whatever your thing is — the class, the book, the business, the instrument, the trip, the conversation you keep putting off — it’s there. It waited this long. It’ll wait a little longer. But maybe don’t make it wait too much longer.
You’ve got more in you than you’re giving yourself credit for.
Thank you for spending this time with me. If something here resonated, I hope you’ll come back. Connect with me at R2RB.com or catch Out of the Attic Live From Delaware on Sundays at 7 PM EST.
Until next time, take good care of yourself — and remember, even when life isn’t funny, you don’t have to go through it alone. Keep showing up for your life. It’s still very much in progress.
What did you put down that’s waiting for you? Tell me in the comments.
© R2RB Network — Life’s Funny…Until It’s Not™
Life’s Funny…Until It’s Not™ is available wherever you listen to podcasts. Come hang out with us. Listen here. → https://lifesfunnyuntilitsnot.buzzsprout.com
— Deb LaMotta
R2RB Network · Life’s Funny…Until It’s Not™
r2rb.com · Where Independent Voices Build Legacy
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