I started this blog to vent feelings about being considered a Senior Citizen, and how it seems people treat me and react to me being older. I add snips when a new boggle hits me. I'm still a lost boy inside. I write here what troubles me.
Sunday, December 23, 2018
A Little Wrinkle In The Oldness, Relaxivity Thread
I wrote, "I've done all that, and I'm able to do it on-call". Then I pondered it and realized that that wasn't really true.
Y'see, if you relax the standards that you're used to, you lose a little of the ability to recall it when you need it. A laissez faire approach takes the place, just a little, of the Button Down Life you used to lead.
Without guarding your Ready-For-Anything sharpness, it will dull and so will you.
So at all ages, for some personality-types, well, really for most of them, keeping the mental edge is akin to keeping your known self.
Is it as important at 65 as it was at 25, 35, 45? In a way, no. But in another way yes.
As long as you have to keep your self in the World of Work, you have to keep all those tools you developed and still require as sharp as possible.
And, driven by the fear of losing who you once were, if that seems at all important, you continue to sharpen them until you and they are no longer important to anyone.
So while you must honestly admit you are less than the person you were in youth, you must also honestly endeavor to remain as much as most of that person you were for yourself as for those who hired you to be of some value to them.
New Direction In My Posts
So, I start with a thought that hit me tonight.
I have always been dual in nature. One part of me likes being precise and organized in thought and deed. Another part chafes at the "busy-ness" of that.
Reason? the anxiety that being that busy all the time creates. Panic attacks. Mild, though. I've learned to control them over the years.
So, I derailed the plan to load my day tomorrow with busyness. You don't need details. It's mundane.
In years past I would do a loaded schedule to test my focus, stamina and follow-through.
In my later years I don't feel it as necessary to test them.
Age? Yeah, most likely. Diminished testosterone. Sickness, tiredness, me-ness at 65.
The unneccesary-ness of proving all that to myself again and again. I've done all that, and I'm able to do it on-call. And I'm tired of dredging all that up.
Bad? Maybe. But I defer to the who I am now to the who I was then.
To put forth honesty, I am NOT who I was 30 years ago, and I think I'm finally OK with that.
I now have time to be the who I have become. The less hyper, less intense, less annoying version of the me I used to be.
Tuesday, December 11, 2018
People Puzzle Me
This becomes a deep, religious/philosophical subject for me because I am dead stunned by what we as a species are going through from generations past to the present.
In the 60's I, and many of my peers, confronted the issues of our day. Prejudice, poverty, ignorance, xenophobia, war, etc.
50 years on, nothing has changed. How is that possible? Who wasn't listening? Why wasn't all this passed on? Who didn't consider it important enough?
Are we trapped? Forced to re-live the past because something wants us to?
There are so many other issues not being addressed, it's time to drop all the already-hashed stuff and make the necessary improvements.
Why do I keep I hearing about stuff that should already have been settled? What does it take to get the hell past it?
Do we all really enjoy repeating gone-through conflict so much that we have to ignore the important stuff?
Do we enjoy playing fool to some greater god? Do we like keeping our heads tucked between our legs THAT MUCH?!
Who gets to be the first to stop the repetitive behaviors that make us all look like idiots?
I've already seen what we're trapped into doing, so I'm standing in wait for that one who will end the cycle. Then the next and the next until there are no others left.
We, as a species then, will move on to address the stuff that really matters.