As a New Year’s Eve baby, I’ve had my share of slightly and more-than-slightly hung-over New Year’s Days, but they’re all in the past, when my party energy was at its peak.

My birthday was an excuse for friends and me to frolic to excess, including some of the most risqué birthday presents you’ve ever seen. As of two Saturdays ago, I am now on the 70th floor of life, with a rather unique feeling.

Seventy is when you begin to have serious aches, pains, illnesses and diseases, isn’t it? I’ve been so lucky dodging any major ailments. Except for a tonsillectomy when I was 4 years old and a pilonidal cyst, I’ve never had any major surgeries. My poor dad had several, including two hip replacements on each hip. He was literally scarred from head to toe. But he lived to be 95.

From the septuagenarian point of view, it seems that life has whizzed by like a zephyr. I know lots of very healthy and active octogenarians, but I kind of throw that picture out of my mind when I think about applying it to myself.

As a 5-year-old, I was fixated on toy bulldozers and road graders. My goal then was to be a road grader when I grew up. I would play endlessly with my toy road grader in the back yard, trying to emulate the real thing that came by occasionally to smooth out a nearby dirt road. To this day I have a fascination for heavy equipment and some of the real artists that operate these machines like sculptors.

When I was 10, I took my first airplane trip alone to see my uncle in Carlsbad, N.M. It was a thrill taking off and flying in that Continental Airlines DC-3. That’s when Robert Six owned Continental and was married to Ethel Merman. No huge ID tag for me, as lone minors now have to wear.

I flew into El Paso, where Uncle Tommy and Aunt Bertha met me. It was fun being away from home. But, boy, was it hot, and, of course, no AC. Uncle Tommy owned a tire business and took me on a field trip one day to Hobbs, Eunice and Jal, N.M. These were tiny towns near the west Texas border. The epitome of desolation.

When I reached the age of 20, my immediate goal was to avoid flunking out of college. Hate to tell you how close I came, being put on probation for a 1.3 GPA at the end of the first semester of my sophomore year. And the scale was a five-point system. I gradually pulled myself out of that predicament when I decided not to be an engineer. Physics and calculus were not my thing.

At 30, I had the world by the tail. But I still didn’t know what I wanted to do or be. I just took the very best jobs I could find and ended up in the computer services arena — with a major in geology, no less. We lived in a very homogeneous town, Simsbury, Conn., where most people in our age bracket were making about the same salary with equally important jobs. The business and social competition was keen.

At 40 years of age, I was flying high, with a great position where I couldn’t wait to wake up in the morning and go to work. It was exciting in the computer business that was flourishing in the mid-’70s. This was a great era for fast promotions and success, as smart technical school graduates with decent management skills could be promoted almost instantaneously as the computer industry accelerated.

At age 50, I was seriously contemplating retirement because by that time I had been in about 10 different jobs and still didn’t know what I wanted to do or be. I could hold a job but was, and still am, a bit impatient.

Golf began to swallow me up, and often I would risk taking time off for a good match instead of tending to the grindstone.

One time my boss’s boss tried to reach me at the country club and fortunately the boys at the 10th hole shack had a phone, so I could at least call him back. Today, of course, the ubiquitous cell phone saves many an executive who is “tied up in a meeting” on the golf course.

At 60, a large computer firm for which I worked was “downsizing,” and I was one of the older employees who fell victim, notwithstanding age discrimination laws. Not a real happy time, but at least there was golf.

Now, at 70, I feel a certain real peace within me, knowing that I’ve had such a good life and don’t have too many serious battles to face. The calm and confidence kicking in at age 70 is something I hope everyone can experience.