The Framework Of Aging As I Am Experiencing

 Notes On Age And What Could Be Useful To You

EXERCISE:

Never just sit or be sedentary. Walk or bicycle. Hook your feet under the chair or couch and do situps. Taking it to the extreme is unnecessary. It doesn’t take a $2000 exercise machine to maintain your bodily looseness and tone. Exercise burns calories, too.


EATING:
 
When you age your digestive system, because of metabolism, really wants less food. You don’t always sense that. So as a matter of simplicity, just eat less of what you are accustomed to eating.

Your body/mind may become rebellious. There won’t be as much on your plate/in your stomach and you might feel cheated. You may start snacking to make up for it. I don’t recommend it.

If you can’t do without the bulk fill feeling in your stomach eat lettuce. Eat celery. Re-habit your eating. Changing a habit takes about 21 days. Obesity and the illnesses it causes takes your life.

DIGESTIVE REGULARITY:

To help your body process what you eat, because of metabolic slow-down, use supplements. Fiber-high foods help. Taking fiber pills or powder works, too, but can cause constipation.

I have found that prunes or prune juice are an easy supplement to take and have not caused any problems for me. And they do the job for me.
 

 FOODS YOU MIGHT WANNA STOP EATING/DRINKING:

My last doctor’s visits have been punctuated with concerns over my blood sugar and my bad cholesterol. I studied up and am making the effort to not eat or drink the following:

1. Breads. I have started to feel loaded down when I eat breads.
    My substitute? Rice cakes.

2. Milk. To trim what I take in of cholesterol-bearing foods I am trying to switch over to other “milks” .

3. Water. Bottled water has been nearly the only thing I drink
    besides oat milk. Once in a rare while I will drink carbonated
    water based drinks with flavorings. Un-sugared.

I have tried soy milk, which I don’t like the taste of.

Rice milk which is not too bad, but seems a little watered-down and has a slightly odd after-taste.

I won’t go with Hemp milk. I mean really?  

I found a “milk” I really like drinking: Oat Milk. Yep. Creamy, tasty,
it has the benefits of being a cholesterol reducer like oatmeal.

 I EAT LESS: Chicken, pork, bacons, sausages, Red Meats, Eggs and liverwurst. 

Eggs are not so good for a person with already high cholesterol. Egg whites are a substitute, but...they’re just not the same and you can tell.

HAD TO CUT EATING WHEAT NOODLES. I now eat chickpea, rice, lentil, etc. pastas.

I EAT: Plant-based “meats". Zero cholesterol. But some products are not all they are made out to be. There's a taste difference. If you wanna go all-in you ignore the obvious. But is it that advantageous? The jury's still out.


I’VE HAD GOOD SUCCESS WITH:

Morningstar Farms sausage patties and some crumbles and burgers.  

Loma Linda canned products. Because of the long shelf-life, they are a tolerable choice. I like the Linkettes and Big Franks. I like the Vege Burger. Very versatile. The Tuno is hit-and-miss.  

I still prefer to eat tuna in water and mackerel. I buy into the omega 3 healthy-ness. Ignoring the issues with mercury.

Another good product to me is Beyond Meat. There are other companies also making similar products. The cooked look, taste and feel is very much hard to tell from real ground meat when you finesse them with things like smoke flavoring and liquids like worcestershire sauce, A-1 sauce, mustard, etc.

Boca Burgers are commodities. They’re edible but not super delicious.

Some of the Gardein items are tasty. Their “patties” for example.

I’ve never had a tasty Quorn brand anything. They’ve always left me feeling a little ill after eating them.

 I really like Hillary’s burgers and Trader Joe’s pea-protein burgers.

I always eat veggies. Canned, frozen and fresh, a wide variety. It’s all good.

Oh, and lots of olives. Stuffed with garlic, blue cheese and onion, green, from Spain. And Kalamata. And black. Pickles are a guilty pleasure in limited use.
 
I still eat potatoes, too. Mostly dry-pack mashed. In moderation.
Rarely a small red skin, yukon gold, white potatoes, too. In the microwave they make a great simple side dish.

I like to snack while watching TV at times. This can derail the eating curtailment, so I try to eat nuts, fried green beans, fried root veggies. Not that so much due to the added sugars. Because of their exotic source, cashews top my list.

CHEESES:  Because of the high cholesterol content, I have changed to veggie-based cheeses. Some of coconut oils, some of nuts like almonds, others.

The taste, like some veggie burgers, is really bad. Some are pretty tasty. Not much like milk-based cheeses, but, given the difference in cholesterol levels, they are necessary evils to the aging body.

OTHER CHANGES AGE PRESENTS:

I sleep less than ever. I believe it’s not OK and I try different supplements to get more sleep.

Melatonin: My system reacts oddly to it. I feel sleepy but remain too alert to fully sleep.

Dyphenhydramine HCL. A cough med additive. I can take a half-pill and after 3-4 hours get sleepy. Then on waking up I am groggy all day long. In fact most of the other pills react with me the same way.

Unisom. A different pill that actually works for me.

My Achilles’ Heel? Great Late Night TV. And when I stay up I start to go to the ‘fridge. Still working to shed that problem, but I'm gaining the upper hand. 

WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR ATTITUDE ON AGING:

After retiring early in flat disgust, I strongly recommend you keep working as long as possible. When work stops so does your desire to remain orderly and disciplined.  You.. I find it tough to stick to a routine. I always have but have had obligations that the work-world forced me to keep.

Don’t ABSOLUTELY DON’T cut ties with Humanity. Unless you have developed an allergy to people stay in the loop. Nothing is more damaging to your confidence and communication desires than hiding in your home. MAKE yourself get “Out There”.

Find a hobby and do it. Volunteer with groups that serve needy people.

Take walks. Marvel over nature. Enjoy your place in the world.
Find ways to improve your outlook on life. It is too damned easy to develop a “Get Off My Lawn” outlook.

It is Scary Easy to become self-isolating and depressed.

Depression is prevalent in older people due to simply reduced activity. The brain produces endorphins when you exercise. They produce happy feelings. Stop producing endorphins, reduce happy. Simple enough.

Don’t fall victim. Stay vigilant. No shit, folks it sneaks up on you too easily.

Not Done With the Oldness/Relaxivity Thread

I left my maybe last World of Work job not long back. The weariness of dealing with the unchanging sameness of corporate structure had not left me.

I tried to wrap the crap in patience, but discovered that, like many personal resources, it had come to be a dangerously short-supply resource.

I'm realizing I've always had a different way of looking at things. Now the influence is more profound, and I don't know how to ignore what I once did to carve my niche and leave a mark.


The Old-ness brings generally a kind of two-edged experience to it.

On the one hand, I'm become respected. Living to a certain point gives younger people a reason to revere me...a little. The greetings, the recognition that a certain resolve is required to be this old, I guess.

On the other, I'm become rejectable. The Old-ness is wrinkles, ugli-ness, out-of-shapeness, unkempt-ness. To youth I'm far from the ideal of beauty. 

 To peers I may be just fine. But, like me, there's no real beauty to draw from there.

In not attaching myself to the yoke of discipline of a work routine, I constantly need to check with myself to be sure the machine of my existence has not completely broken down.

I find I'm still creating tasks to remain structured just so I don't devolve into a completely useless, broken down at the side of the road thing. Although at some soon point, I will likely be anyway.

So, with old-ness and relaxivity one must constantly be on guard that what makes one unique does not slip away too soon.

Because it seems important, somehow, not to let it dissipate. As though in life there aren't many of the truly different. And the resource they possess must be preserved so life won't become as drainingly uniform as it easily can.

A Little Wrinkle In The Oldness, Relaxivity Thread

Just now I published the post I wrote a while back. I forgot to publish it when I wrote it. Meh. More proof old-ness rounds off the precise-ness.

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

I've always been kinda introspective. I mull my deeper philosophical issues, especially when some random didactic thread crosses my mind.

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.


 

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.

Addendum To the Codecil

I have to backtrack on the wording regarding being fed up with the Grind enough to withdraw.

The broken paradigms have not gone away. I'm back at the Grind and I have new experiences that prove the crap is alive and thriving.

It's  as deeply embedded as it ever was thanks to the disappointing sameness that is Human Nature.

But if, like me, you were to focus on the goals that staying in the Grind can earn you, the  general disgusting-ness  becomes FAR, far easier to endure.

Hence, I am enduring because what I gained was freedom from the debt I carried.


Hey, for now I am still pretty healthy.Who knows what is to come?

For 10 Years

A long-held debt is gone today. That balance got large because of personal mis-steps and unexplained avoidances.

I have been on hold since it was created, as making money was tough for a number of reasons before I retired.

I have had three financial breakdowns in my life. They have eaten up a third of my life.

But I'm debt-free now. I'm also old now.

The first thing I did was cry. For a lot of time gone by. And for the relief of finally being done with it.

At the same time I'm aware that I can't just pick up and resume as though nothing has changed. 

A LOT is changed. Some of it can't be recovered from.

Now, I'm trying to figure out what's supposed to come next.If there IS a next.