A Covert Operative’s New Year’s Resolution 2026

I’m done blaming age. No more using “I’m in my 40s” as a crutch, a shield, or a convenient excuse when something feels harder than it used to. Age is real, but blaming it is a habit. Habits are trainable.

//   You can’t negotiate with time, but you can renegotiate with yourself on how to spend that time

        As a covert operative, my body was a machine – deadly, fast, strong, durable, and ready on demand. That kind of performance becomes an identity. When you’ve been that physically impressive, you start to assume that capability is a permanent trait instead of a maintained condition.

Then the first real signs show up. Longer warmups, stiffer mornings, slower recovery, minor injuries that linger. The ego hears that as a verdict. The professional hears it as data. I’ve spent enough years reading environments for risk. It’s time I read my own condition the same way.

        The hard truth is that “age” is a lazy label that hides specifics. It’s a single word that conveniently covers sleep debt, sloppy nutrition, reduced mobility work, accumulated stress, chronic inflammation, old injuries, and training that hasn’t evolved. It’s also a way to avoid the discomfort of adjustment.

Tradecraft teaches you to break problems down into parts you can influence or manipulate to task. If a safehouse is compromised, you don’t say “the city is dangerous” and stop there. You identify the breach point. You fix the breach point. My body doesn’t deserve less rigor than an op plan.

        So the resolution isn’t to pretend I’m 28, that’s fantasy – it’s to stop reaching for age as the first explanation and the last word. If I’m gassed from the stairs, the question isn’t “Is this getting old?” The question is “What did I do this week to earn this outcome?” Conditioning, hydration, stress load, bodyweight drift, breathing mechanics, recovery – something is out of line.

If my shoulder barks on a simple movement while training, I don’t accept decline as fate. I audit mobility, scap control, volume, technique, and tissue care. I treat it like a malfunction in equipment: diagnose, repair, re-test.

        That mindset changes everything. It shifts me from complaint to craft. It forces standards back into the day. Training that respects joints and builds capacity, not just bravado, strength that’s quieter but more usable, conditioning that’s consistent, sleep like a mission requirement.

I don’t “hope” I’m ready or care that I’m not, I run small checks and make adjustments like I would with kit before movement. When the body pushes back, I don’t take it as an insult but as feedback and tighten the plan. I can’t control that time moves forward. I can control whether I show up.

If I want to be effective in the field and in life, I don’t get to outsource responsibility to age. Time is not an alibi, it’s a constraint to plan against.

        By next New Year, I want a different reflex. When something aches, slows, or frustrates me, I won’t say “well, I’m in my 40s.” I’ll say: “What’s the variable?” That’s the operative’s resolution – replace excuses with assessment, nostalgia with discipline, self-pity with procedure.

//   I’m not old… I’m under-maintained.