“What am I going to do with the rest of my life?”

It’s normal to ask yourself that question in your early 20s, fresh out of school. But Andrew Walen, now in his early 50s, found himself pondering that dilemma last year.

After navigating decades of personal and professional challenges, the Pikesville resident was preparing to sell his successful and groundbreaking practice focused on men’s mental health and body image. A simple internet search for potential businesses to purchase brought him back to his initial passion and career path: music. But this go-round he found a way to meld his rock skills with his therapy ones.

As of June, Walen is the proud owner of School of Rock Pikesville, the 413th franchise of the prolific music education organization. “It’s the opportunity to be a mentor for these kids in the way I wish I had an early mentor, an opportunity to build self-esteem,” he said.

I take joy in telling stories about reinvention in middle age. There’s no such thing as being too old to pursue the thing that fulfills you. As someone who has known Walen since our Baltimore City College days — we reconnected on social media about 15 years ago — it’s obvious he’s found his footing, and his groove.

After a decade of pursuing music in Nashville, Tennessee, Walen became a stay-at-home dad to his medically fragile son and, eventually, a therapist. But music was always his bliss. Opening School of Rock helped him fulfill his grandfather George Roman’s deathbed wish.

“He whispered, ‘Do what you love,’” Walen said. His grandfather was a painter in his youth but segued into sign painting to support his family. “He gave me permission. It still brings tears to my eyes out of joy.”

Walen’s love of music and art runs deep. One grandmother, Betty Seldin, was a singer and actress in local Yiddish theater, and the other, Diane Walen, first-chair violin for the Edinburgh Royal Children’s Orchestra. Even his parents, psychologist Susan Walen and internist and part-time Orioles team doctor Harry Walen, were musical.

Andrew Walen played banjo and piano at an early age, “although my sister told me I’d never get a date if I didn’t learn to play guitar,” he said. She was right: While he was studying journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park, “I saw a guy outside my dorm, Denton Hall, playing guitar surrounded by girls. And the next thing you know I was in a band.”

The band broke up like most college groups do, though some friendships were lifelong: Former bandmate Bob Jachens now works at School of Rock with Walen. But the band breakup coincided with the death of Walen’s grandfather and his first major depressive episode.

“Mental illness runs in my family,” he said.

He came back to Baltimore for a time before studying at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. After school, he headed to Nashville to make it as a professional, which worked for a while. He met his now-wife, Jennifer, created music for TV and CD-ROMs, played live and worked as a music writer for the Nashville New Times.

But his depression and body image issues were always present. He was told he weighed too much to be successful in the ’90s era of skinny lead singers. Walen kept plugging away anyway, but plans changed when his son George, named after his late grandfather, was born in 2002 with ”serious medical problems.”

Because Jennifer “had the good job and I was the broke musician,” Walen decided to stay home with George.

At the time, Walen was also in “the worst version of a 20-year eating disorder, a full-blown anorexic.” He received no diagnosis then, though. “It was not expected that men had these issues,” he said. He was instead told he had depression and anxiety, or was a narcissist for caring about what his body looked like.

Walen’s mother, herself a psychologist, always told her son he should have been one, too, so he started studying social work at night, and he met women with eating disorder diagnoses. Suddenly, he realized what he’d been dealing with, eventually “cobbling together” his own treatment.

According to the National Eating Disorders Association, one in three people experiencing an eating disorder is male, but they’re less likely to be diagnosed than women. Walen’s renewed purpose? “To never let another man go through this.”

When his son was 4, Walen got a job at the University of Maryland Medical Center to be closer to his family, and founded The Body Image Therapy Center in Baltimore, and then the male-focused DUDE Mental Health practice, an online coaching service.

Walen, whose main focus had always been George, felt he could finally sell his practice only as his son launched into adulthood. It was now time for Walen to answer his own question about the next step in life.

When the School of Rock franchise came across his desk, “It hit me like a thunderbolt. This is what I was supposed to do.” George had been a student at the one in Towson, and Walen remembered feeling George’s “absolute joy of being a kid” whenever he picked him up. As an owner, “I could not wait to see that same excitement in other kids walking out,” he said.

He’s on his way. The Pikesville location, where my own kid had ’90s rock camp this summer, is a happy place with practice rooms named after classic local clubs such as Hammerjacks and The 8x10. Bright murals adorn the walls with music-playing versions of local animal legends such as Poe, the Ravens’ mascot; the Oriole Bird; a horse from Preakness; and school mascot Coal, Walen’s own big, loveable, curly-haired Newfiedoodle — part Newfoundland, part poodle and, I believe, part Snuffleupagus.

The mission is about more than “just kids learning music” but about them learning to love themselves through it. “That’s what I wanted out of this,” Walen said. That, and the knowledge he finally made good on his grandfather’s last wish.

“I can hear his voice saying ‘good boy.’”