You've almost certainly heard the Frank Sinatra song "It Was a Very Good Year," in which he goes to the trouble to tell you how much better his life is than yours.

I'm not entirely sure the song was necessary. We've all seen the footage of him hanging out with other celebrities, policy makers and myriad beautiful women. His coolness is well-documented. But maybe he was concerned future generations would misinterpret the footage and think those beautiful women were his sisters.

So, he wrote a song letting us know that when he was 21 years old, he was spending his time with "city girls who lived up the stair." Since the song was recorded in 1965, Frank can't really go into detail, but he does let us know that the girl in question had good-smelling hair (this was a selling point in the '60s, I guess), and that said hair "came undone." Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.

If Frank were still alive, he might take advantage of modern social mores to write a song that states more directly his greatness. Perhaps he would have sung: "Here is a List of All the Women Who Wanted Me."

He would follow that up with a little ditty called: "The Names of All the Guys I've Punched in the Face."

Anyway, from age 21 the song jumps to when Frank was 35 years old and romancing "blue-blooded girls of independent means." The song contains no specific mention of the crooner in his 32nd year, but I think it's safe to assume he was doing all right. Even if he wasn't, I now have only three years to catch up; I turn 32 this week.

I'm not happy about turning 32. My birthday is little more than an annual opportunity for me to reflect on everything that I am not. I hate my birthday.

Usually, the week or so surrounding March 20 is spent lamenting the fact that I am still not president of Cuba. That's probably an odd ambition to have -- for a bloke with an Irish/Scottish background who has never been to Cuba, speaks Spanish poorly, and has no real interest in politics. But a man can dream. Walt Disney famously said, "If you can dream it, you can do it."

That's an interesting sentiment. I wonder if it applies to that dream I had about a magic flying polar bear that spoke Welsh and helped set me up with Reese Witherspoon.

Dude, if I had a magic flying Welsh-speaking polar bear, I would definitely be president of Cuba by now. And gettin' it on with blue-blooded girls of independent means.

The Cuban ambition -- that's a good name for a band, by the way -- extends back to when I was a senior in high school. For the sake of our yearbook, we were asked to fill out a survey stating our future plans. But I suffered from a distinct lack of plans. Unless convincing Emma Carrbridge, by way of page after page of insufferable melancholy poetry, that breaking up with me was a good idea can be called a "plan." Indeed, in that area I exceeded beyond expectation.

Otherwise, I didn't have a clue what to do with my life. So on my survey, I claimed my long-term goal was to become "el presidente de Cuba."

My thinking at the time was that if I failed at this ambition it wouldn't be the sort of thing that I would feel bad about. I mean, if I had written "journalist" and then showed up at the 10-year high school reunion not having succeeded at that goal, I would have felt like poo. Everyone else would have managed to become a doctor or member of a Van Morrison tribute band or what have you, and there's me working for Fox News.

President of Cuba, though. The oddity of the claim makes it OK to never achieve. But it's a ridiculous ambition that has come back to bite me, because I'm one of those people who actually buys into that "if you can dream it, you can do it" nonsense.

So, my not being the installed leader of a Caribbean nation -- despite a recent letter to Raul Castro suggesting a power-sharing deal that would see me taking over just on weekends (el presidente del fin de semana) -- makes me worry that perhaps I'm not dreaming big enough and not trying hard enough to accomplish what dreams I have.

As it stands, I suppose things aren't too awful. I'm married to a beautiful woman with good-smelling hair, so I'm doing all right by the Frank Sinatra standard. I'm living in Britain, which is a dream that had been with me for at least a decade before moving here. And slowly, slowly I am earning the college degree I never thought I'd get when I set Cuban presidency as a goal.

I feel that I could be doing more, though; I could be and probably should be pushing myself harder. Thankfully, I am still relatively young. If I put my mind to things, I have the time to get them done. However, if I get to be 33 and I'm still not El Presidente, then I'll really start to worry.

Chris Cope lives with his wife in Cardiff, Wales. His column appears every other Tuesday.