We decided to make an offer.

But as someone who suffers from chronic indecision, I was worried. Renovating a house meant making countless decisions, the ramifications of which I would obviously have no choice but to live with. Worse, not only was I inept when it came to power tools, I was sure I lacked the creative vision to tackle a massive fixer-upper.

More than this, though, buying a house felt too adult to me.

I had spent the bulk of my 30s and the dawn of my 40s pretending I was still in my 20s, playing in bands and making a name for myself in the absurd world of competitive air guitar. In 2006, I traveled the world attending film festivals in support of an air-guitar documentary in which I starred, and it was at an Edinburgh Film Festival after-party that I locked gazes with the Scottish air groupie who would become my wife. She had an enormous smile and the brightest blue eyes I had ever seen, and her air guitaring wasn’t half bad, either.

Though I was 35, and a dozen years her senior, my life felt anything but grown-up. I figured my insistence on living like a 20-something would compensate for our age difference.

After three years of long-distance off-and-on dating, I confessed I loved her, and we solved our geography problem by getting married. At our wedding, on top of a mountain near Santa Barbara, Calif., I danced the hora wearing a kilt. A rainbow appeared as I read my vows. It was magic.

Together, we reveled in shunning maturity’s trappings. Our honeymoon was spent on a tour bus traversing the United States, putting on air-guitar competitions. While most of my friends had children, my wife shuddered at the thought of giving birth and I didn’t feel anywhere near ready to be a father.