Nothing to see here, move along
I don’t know if I have anything new to say. I’m teaching classes and they’re going pretty well. I’m avoiding my next novel in favor of some advertising stuff I need to do. I’m hopefully losing weight (SLOWLY). I turn 58 in two weeks —
That’s it, isn’t it? A year closer to sixty.
Close to Sixty
Do I feel close to 60?
My body — well, that feels old. I’m out of shape and my right knee is oh, so messed up.
My mind? I feel 40, only with a lot more memories than I should have. In fact, it’s only when I think of my memories that I feel old in my mind. Like when I think of old technologies — dial phones, vinyl records, 8-track tapes. Or when I think of pasting Plaid Stamps from the A&P into a booklet to redeem, or going to a real ice cream parlor at the little pharmacy right in town. Was it a better time? No, it definitely wasn’t. It was a time of enforced conformity, one I didn’t fit into. I guess I’m not so old that I see my childhood in sweet sepia tones.
What about myself as a sexual being? That’s not a problem, except that I still find myself attracted to younger men (about 30 years old at this point) and any fantasies in that direction seem ludicrous.
From the outside
I get mixed information from the outside, somewhere between “You’re not almost sixty!” and “When are you going to retire?” The latter comes from my colleagues, because the MOSERS retirement plan I’m in would pay for retirement already. (The reason I don’t is because the University no longer funds health insurance for retirees during the medicare gap.)
Retirement dreams
I know what I’d do if I retired now — I’d go full-steam into my retirement career. And nap a lot. I’d sit in the coffeehouse and write. I’d relax. I wouldn’t miss work at all. If I could retire now, I would, and it wouldn’t make me feel any older.
But for now, I’ll work, and remember what it was like to be younger, and make little fuss about the passage of time.
Words Like Me 