I want to go looking ahead. At 80, I am a half-day person. Trying to be more on occasions is exhausting and, inevitably, I end up sleeping badly. Days out are planned, resting on days before and after. Sleep is my secret, together with eating very little processed food.
I describe myself as ‘One Lucky Old Bunny’ because I still share a life and a bed with the same woman after 50 years, who I have loved for every day that I have known her. My body may be old, but my heart still works thanks to an ‘o’ ring fitted inside my aortic valve in 2017 and my lungs continue to defy a death sentence they were given in 2015.
That I get the chance to cope with ‘bad days’ when they come along is enough to make me happy. 🐰
Good to hear from you again, Lynn. Yes and these crazy times no one can blame you for retreating and going within. I think it’s the best thing we can do after we’ve done our duty to the social contract by voting. But yeah, all this drive to succeed lately, the social media, you should be on this app that app, what are you writing? What are you producing? What are you creating? I sit down and wonder why do I have to be doing all that? Can I just be me isn’t that enough? I think these are the questions we should be asking. Thanks for sharing your thoughts..
I began to journal when I was in my 40s and I am now 83. I may miss a few days, or even weeks and sometimes I write daily. It has been enlightening to me to read decades later and experience my anguish, grief, happiness and range of emotions. There were things I had forgotten and swore to always remember. It has been a godsend for me but then I added a gratitude journal in the 90s when my life got rougher. Just 5 things a day I am thankful for changed my outlook for the positive. I am hoping that after I die one of my descendants will read it and understand me and remember me. Perhaps they will learn something.
I applaud what you are doing. 70 is the new 50 and you have a long way to go. Keep communicating with yourself and with us. You are doing good things for us!
I am on the same path, at the crossroad you describe so well. It’s solitary and I feel even more alone in the pursuit where I live, the communities I am part of… so I really appreciate reading your testament!
After reading Lyn's return post and going through the comments I don't feel so alone. Even living in a senior citizen gated community hasn't made it easy to get friendly with others. Self pity? Perhaps. I do find writing an easier way to communicate so I guess I'll just hang in there with the good people of SubStack.
After reading Lyn's return post and going through the comments I don't feel so alone. Even living in a senior citizen gated community hasn't made it easy to get friendly with others. Self pity? Perhaps. I do find writing an easier way to communicate so I guess I'll just hang in there with the good people of SubStack.
How odd! I've been going through my email messages that I either ignored due to lack of time or read but failed to place in their files or delete because they weren't needed to begin with.
Just yesterday I had reached October 2021 and there was one from Accidental Icon. I moved it to its rightful file and wondered why you had disappeared.
As current worldly conditions have knocked me for a loop fairly matching what you've shared here. I am so pleased to learn that you still have the will to move on from rather than hold on to self-inflicted misery. I've yet to reach that point. As always, you ignited a spark in my addled brain. Thank you.
I've become one hidden from the public, only going to the mailbox each day of delivery. My fury towards Donald Trump's building up his Fourth Reich before our very eyes while the Media chose to treat it as just Donald being Donald.
I've been screaming into SubStack that I'm the same age as Donald but I still have a brain that works. Who am I trying to kid?
I sit in front of the TV, crying over Michael Landon's ability to get to my real self that I've conveniently stuffed away, refusing to emote over things gone forever from my life. In my youth I'd read all eight of the Laura Ingalls Wilder's real life History known as "The Little House Collection". My older sister suggested that her 6th grade teacher who years later was also mine, she'd asked Mr. Nutt to read those books to the class. He did. I took her suggestion to Mr. Nutt and he was more than happy to oblige.
I was already moving on to a soul separate and individual from my classmates and easily shed the outside demands to be like everyone else. I never dreamed that being myself all these years would find me, a gay Vietnam Veteran, recovering from two years of living in my car, winding up in Veterans Hospital from a heat stroke brought on by the 2022 heatwave during the pandemic.
Three days after being released from hospital the VA placed me in a Veterans Village where I was taken care of free of charge while they guided me into a Section 8 apartment in the middle of San Diego's beautiful LGBTQ COMMUNITY. I've been here more than a year in this senior citizen gated community, surrounded by the most kind and friendly people, both of the community nature and hetero nature.
I took to going out front for a smoke, enjoying the friendly greetings from dog walkers. I was the sidewalk rendition of an elderly Walmart Greeter.
This year, just prior to my birthday in April, I was rushed to the hospital with pneumonia. Recovery has been long and frustrating. My usual strength was gone and has refused to return. I panic just preparing a Kraft Mac and Cheese lunch and decided I was no longer able to cook Martha Stewart quality meals and desserts.
That did it for my mental state. I hope seeing your return will help bring me around so I can at least hold up under the pressure of the coming horrors of Fascism. Thank you again for sharing your usual will to overcome the down and dirty blues. Hopefully Kamala Harris will show that freak of nature who's boss and bring him down.
How utterly beautiful this essay is. I have been…or still am in the place you describe and it began after I lost my mother last December 18th. After a lifetime of taking care of her emotionally and later physically I realized that I had derived my sense of self from caregiving. Always giving, always trying to be what everyone around me wanted me to be. And at the ripe old age of 67, I find that I have absolutely no idea who I am. It is a painful and lonely place to be, and excavating my soul is work that should not be attempted by the faint hearted. But it is a hero’s journey, isn’t it? And it helps to know others are fellow travelers on this road we never anticipated we’d be on. The journey is long and harrowing at times, but deep in my very core, my very soul, I know it is worth the ride.
Sending you love and light on your very own treasure hunt❤️
I traveled your same journey. It was very hard. My heart and soul go out to you❤️ I took care of my mother from the time I was 21 until I was 59. It was a very long and arduous journey❤️
Glad to see you back. It does feel that as we age, the striving looks more like exhaustion and frustration. My weekend was spent tending my plants, winterizing my garden, hands in the dirt, trimming and pruning. And I FELT happy! At peace. For that I am glad.
Great to hear from you, and I'm looking forward to your dispatches! I just turned 70 last week, or so they tell me. Best wishes to us all, let's do this!
Because I am a month from turning 81, I do not consider you old. I am happy for you and excited that your muses encouraged you to change the name of your blog. It bodes well for your future as an older person.
Best wishes to you and your loved ones. I can say that I’m the happiest and most thankful for this season of my life. I’ll be 73 this month and look forward to whatever life has in store for me- this is it and I am grateful I finally have accepted that lifeis one short trip - to be lived. Reminds me of the beauty of “The Circle Game” by Joni Mitchell.
Nice to have you back. I retired in May from teaching. I, too, am searching for the elusive. After doing for others for so long, it's time for me to do me.
Synchronicity. This post led me to your previous one, that I had missed. And I find that I have been acting as a renter for quite some time, disregarding things I know I need to do for me. I was just pondering what needs to change…
Thanks for showing your humanity. It helps us all when those who appear the strongest and most together are willing to be vulnerable. Turns out we’re all lost and found and lost and found a million times over.
I'm older than you and it's a journey. For me, the challenge is not what I want to do, how to spend my hours, but it's the psychological adjustment to the reality of "old." I'm pretty lucky in that I"ve been more healthy than not, though I'm experiencing some of the physical adventures that come with the years. And it's balancing the reality of "old" but keeping on keeping on. I very much appreciated what you've written.
I want to go looking ahead. At 80, I am a half-day person. Trying to be more on occasions is exhausting and, inevitably, I end up sleeping badly. Days out are planned, resting on days before and after. Sleep is my secret, together with eating very little processed food.
I describe myself as ‘One Lucky Old Bunny’ because I still share a life and a bed with the same woman after 50 years, who I have loved for every day that I have known her. My body may be old, but my heart still works thanks to an ‘o’ ring fitted inside my aortic valve in 2017 and my lungs continue to defy a death sentence they were given in 2015.
That I get the chance to cope with ‘bad days’ when they come along is enough to make me happy. 🐰
Good to hear from you again, Lynn. Yes and these crazy times no one can blame you for retreating and going within. I think it’s the best thing we can do after we’ve done our duty to the social contract by voting. But yeah, all this drive to succeed lately, the social media, you should be on this app that app, what are you writing? What are you producing? What are you creating? I sit down and wonder why do I have to be doing all that? Can I just be me isn’t that enough? I think these are the questions we should be asking. Thanks for sharing your thoughts..
I began to journal when I was in my 40s and I am now 83. I may miss a few days, or even weeks and sometimes I write daily. It has been enlightening to me to read decades later and experience my anguish, grief, happiness and range of emotions. There were things I had forgotten and swore to always remember. It has been a godsend for me but then I added a gratitude journal in the 90s when my life got rougher. Just 5 things a day I am thankful for changed my outlook for the positive. I am hoping that after I die one of my descendants will read it and understand me and remember me. Perhaps they will learn something.
I applaud what you are doing. 70 is the new 50 and you have a long way to go. Keep communicating with yourself and with us. You are doing good things for us!
I am on the same path, at the crossroad you describe so well. It’s solitary and I feel even more alone in the pursuit where I live, the communities I am part of… so I really appreciate reading your testament!
After reading Lyn's return post and going through the comments I don't feel so alone. Even living in a senior citizen gated community hasn't made it easy to get friendly with others. Self pity? Perhaps. I do find writing an easier way to communicate so I guess I'll just hang in there with the good people of SubStack.
Richard La France
After reading Lyn's return post and going through the comments I don't feel so alone. Even living in a senior citizen gated community hasn't made it easy to get friendly with others. Self pity? Perhaps. I do find writing an easier way to communicate so I guess I'll just hang in there with the good people of SubStack.
Richard La France
How odd! I've been going through my email messages that I either ignored due to lack of time or read but failed to place in their files or delete because they weren't needed to begin with.
Just yesterday I had reached October 2021 and there was one from Accidental Icon. I moved it to its rightful file and wondered why you had disappeared.
As current worldly conditions have knocked me for a loop fairly matching what you've shared here. I am so pleased to learn that you still have the will to move on from rather than hold on to self-inflicted misery. I've yet to reach that point. As always, you ignited a spark in my addled brain. Thank you.
I've become one hidden from the public, only going to the mailbox each day of delivery. My fury towards Donald Trump's building up his Fourth Reich before our very eyes while the Media chose to treat it as just Donald being Donald.
I've been screaming into SubStack that I'm the same age as Donald but I still have a brain that works. Who am I trying to kid?
I sit in front of the TV, crying over Michael Landon's ability to get to my real self that I've conveniently stuffed away, refusing to emote over things gone forever from my life. In my youth I'd read all eight of the Laura Ingalls Wilder's real life History known as "The Little House Collection". My older sister suggested that her 6th grade teacher who years later was also mine, she'd asked Mr. Nutt to read those books to the class. He did. I took her suggestion to Mr. Nutt and he was more than happy to oblige.
I was already moving on to a soul separate and individual from my classmates and easily shed the outside demands to be like everyone else. I never dreamed that being myself all these years would find me, a gay Vietnam Veteran, recovering from two years of living in my car, winding up in Veterans Hospital from a heat stroke brought on by the 2022 heatwave during the pandemic.
Three days after being released from hospital the VA placed me in a Veterans Village where I was taken care of free of charge while they guided me into a Section 8 apartment in the middle of San Diego's beautiful LGBTQ COMMUNITY. I've been here more than a year in this senior citizen gated community, surrounded by the most kind and friendly people, both of the community nature and hetero nature.
I took to going out front for a smoke, enjoying the friendly greetings from dog walkers. I was the sidewalk rendition of an elderly Walmart Greeter.
This year, just prior to my birthday in April, I was rushed to the hospital with pneumonia. Recovery has been long and frustrating. My usual strength was gone and has refused to return. I panic just preparing a Kraft Mac and Cheese lunch and decided I was no longer able to cook Martha Stewart quality meals and desserts.
That did it for my mental state. I hope seeing your return will help bring me around so I can at least hold up under the pressure of the coming horrors of Fascism. Thank you again for sharing your usual will to overcome the down and dirty blues. Hopefully Kamala Harris will show that freak of nature who's boss and bring him down.
Richard La France
Dispatches From The Shed.... I LOVE it.
me too I love it :-)
Was going to write the exact same comment ^
How utterly beautiful this essay is. I have been…or still am in the place you describe and it began after I lost my mother last December 18th. After a lifetime of taking care of her emotionally and later physically I realized that I had derived my sense of self from caregiving. Always giving, always trying to be what everyone around me wanted me to be. And at the ripe old age of 67, I find that I have absolutely no idea who I am. It is a painful and lonely place to be, and excavating my soul is work that should not be attempted by the faint hearted. But it is a hero’s journey, isn’t it? And it helps to know others are fellow travelers on this road we never anticipated we’d be on. The journey is long and harrowing at times, but deep in my very core, my very soul, I know it is worth the ride.
Sending you love and light on your very own treasure hunt❤️
I traveled your same journey. It was very hard. My heart and soul go out to you❤️ I took care of my mother from the time I was 21 until I was 59. It was a very long and arduous journey❤️
Glad to see you back. It does feel that as we age, the striving looks more like exhaustion and frustration. My weekend was spent tending my plants, winterizing my garden, hands in the dirt, trimming and pruning. And I FELT happy! At peace. For that I am glad.
“Gardener’s World” vibe always a good idea.
Great to hear from you, and I'm looking forward to your dispatches! I just turned 70 last week, or so they tell me. Best wishes to us all, let's do this!
Because I am a month from turning 81, I do not consider you old. I am happy for you and excited that your muses encouraged you to change the name of your blog. It bodes well for your future as an older person.
Best wishes to you and your loved ones. I can say that I’m the happiest and most thankful for this season of my life. I’ll be 73 this month and look forward to whatever life has in store for me- this is it and I am grateful I finally have accepted that lifeis one short trip - to be lived. Reminds me of the beauty of “The Circle Game” by Joni Mitchell.
Now you have me listening to Joni.
Can’t wait to hear what comes from the shed!!! 🩵
Nice to have you back. I retired in May from teaching. I, too, am searching for the elusive. After doing for others for so long, it's time for me to do me.
Synchronicity. This post led me to your previous one, that I had missed. And I find that I have been acting as a renter for quite some time, disregarding things I know I need to do for me. I was just pondering what needs to change…
Thank you! Glad you are back!
Thanks for showing your humanity. It helps us all when those who appear the strongest and most together are willing to be vulnerable. Turns out we’re all lost and found and lost and found a million times over.
I'm older than you and it's a journey. For me, the challenge is not what I want to do, how to spend my hours, but it's the psychological adjustment to the reality of "old." I'm pretty lucky in that I"ve been more healthy than not, though I'm experiencing some of the physical adventures that come with the years. And it's balancing the reality of "old" but keeping on keeping on. I very much appreciated what you've written.