Age is not just a number

I’m decaying. I can feel it. My mind is failing me. I can’t remember details of memories I know I used to be able to recall. I can’t understand some things at all that I used to grasp intuitively. I can’t even calculate in my head like I used to. I’m only 62. I thought when I turned 60 I’d probably have about 20 years left. Hopefully most of it in good (enough) health. Now I’m wondering if I’ll even know when I’ve turned 70.

I used to love reading about philosophical concepts. I struggled with free will and morality. I read St. Thomas Aquinas’ proofs of god. I read about quantum physics. Now I hardly read at all. Somewhere along the line I quit questioning and decided I knew what was real. It didn’t seem like researching was getting me any closer to the truth. The truth became unknowable. Whatever the truth is, I wasn’t going to discover it in a book. I wasn’t going to find an answer there. Just someone else’s opinion of it. Books became arguments that different sides used to sway public opinion. Or was that me that changed?

There’s something about living 60 years that teaches you things you can never get from a book. I know that’s cliche. I remember how interesting the world was when I was a teenager. It’s not that it was different then than now. I’m different. I can look back and compare my own understanding of something then to what I’ve learned just by being alive for awhile. Here’s an example.

The first time I read The Hobbit, I was in 8th grade. I loved it. It was a great story with magic and dragons. It started a love of fantasy that has continued to this day. I got into D&D as a teenager and had characters called Elrond and Saruman. When I read the LOTR again as an adult, I was moved to tears by the heroic loyalty of Sam for his friend Frodo. What changed? The words were the same. It was me that changed.

So here’s the thing. Why do we pretend we don’t change through life? Why do we try to recapture youth? Why do we stick to old traditions even if they aren’t relevant or even wanted anymore? Why do we fight so hard against change?

I think this is the last one I write. I miss you. I don’t know if you even read this stuff anymore.

One a hour a day

I should at least respond to the daily prompts. Just to write something. To exercise those writing muscles.
I don’t really want to. I do it out of guilt.

One hour a day. Why can’t I spend just one hour a day writing? Because I’d have to force myself to. So I don’t for days. I consider it, but I’m having too much fun doing other things.

I’m retired. I don’t have to do anything. For some people that would mean they can finally focus their time on the things they want to do, but couldn’t because of work commitments. For me retirement has been about answering the question, “What DO I really want to do?”

I don’t have a way to judge the weight of what I want to do with what I should do. If I can do what I want. If I don’t have to compromise. Why should I force myself to do something I don’t want to do, but should do, instead of what I want.

I know it sounds like the dilemma of a spoiled, petulant teenager. That’s the way it usually feels like too. But the sad part is, it can be paralyzing at times.

Deep down I know it doesn’t matter. I climbed out on an existential ledge and I can’t get back. Once you begin to understand just how vast, ancient, and ambivalent the Universe is, and human tragedy is objectively insignificant. Famines, plagues, wars, and other mass human casualties are just part of the process of an evolving universe. A comet wiped out most life on earth at one time. Some day, inevitably, not only each of our individual lives, but all life will end. So if I don’t write a blog entry, it’s not that big of a deal.

So why do I feel guilty when I don’t write? Because I made a promise to someone. Our family motto is Remember Your Promises. It is so hard. But I’m trying sweetheart. I’m trying.

The fog clears when the Muse appears

Hi. It’s been way too long. I’ve been recuperating. I’ve been obsessing. Every once in a while, I’ll check online compulsively. Hey, I’m neurodivergent in so many ways, you’d think I shoulda been committed. I wonder about how much the few people I’m close to put up with me more than they accept me. I can’t blame them. I wouldn’t hang out with me if I was someone else. But I’m stuck with me, so I’ve learned to accept that I am going to put a severe strain on any close relationship.

That’s a lot of Is. Not is. The plural of I, however that is written. I guess I really do like talking about myself more than anything. Look, more Is. This is getting ridiculous!

Here’s a good example of my biggest problem lately. It’s a form of procrastination. It’s being paralyzed into doing nothing because the choices of what I could do/ should do overwhelm me. I started writing this because I was overjoyed to see my old friend had liked something I wrote a year ago. I wanted to write directly to let them know I saw the like, but knew that would probably break the fragile thread of connection. So then I had to decide what should I write to let them know that I saw the connection and wanted to respond.

My first impulse is almost always a bad one. I don’t trust myself to do the right thing, because I’ve failed at it so many times in the past. First I was going to like something back. I read some of what they’d been writing and was in the process of clicking like, when I saw the list of others who had liked it. Yep, there was The Other. Ok, glad I didn’t do that.

So my next thought was to write something over there. But The Other would just see that and cut the thread. So here I am. Writing to hopefully maintain the connection without bringing attention and eventual breaking of said connection.

The title is a little misleading. The fog hasn’t cleared. It’s still swirling around keeping me from seeing any path forward. Just glimpses of possible future intersections of fate. I can’t keep the fog from obscuring my long term sight. It hems me in with whisps of ideas that coalesce and then disperse, never to be seen again.

My attempts at self-regulation are pathetic. As soon as I try to organize around a concept, I skip to another and lose my focus. Why haven’t I written? I can’t keep focused on an idea. I could write my memoir. I could write a sci-fi story about the collapse of our satellite infrastructure. I could write opinion pieces on politics, religion, and society. Every day ideas for these topics come and go in this decomposing brain.

It limps along trying to keep me solvent, healthy, and fed. It has to fight itself though for any gains. The constant complainer-in-chief, the self-assessing eye that never sleeps and never misses a mistake. The choir of ghosts in my head that watch what I do and mumble about what the others must think. And their gasps when I trip. It’s weird to be me. It must be even weirder to know me.

Thank you my friend. I’ve missed you. I’ll try, really I will, to write so you have something to read that you didn’t expect. You didn’t look for it. But it was there anyway. Waiting