Had to stop writing and do something else for a while. So, I went over and helped my Dad around his house. He's too feeble to do a lot of things now, so I do mostly cleaning. It's hard seeing his slide, and it was hard seeing it with my mother, or anyone.
We try for immortality and instead we end up extending age a decade or two with diminishing physical and mental capacities. Yet, when faced with that or death, despite what they says when they're young, people choose overwhelming to fade away.
I read a blog by an acquaintance about my age. He said (paraphrasing) unlike people he sees languishing in nursing homes, he's going to kill himself first. My response, which I kept to myself, was, "Don't you think the people you see in nursing homes thought of that?" When it came to pulling the trigger, though, or the switch, or taking those pills or that cyanide, they procrastinated. Until they reached the nursing home level, and still they either procrastinate, or, as horrifying as it is to anybody younger, they find that they're happy enough living that way. They can deal with it.
Fact is, your brain changes as you grow older. Previously boring things become entertaining. You go from punk rock to Mozart. Ultimate Frisbee to Sudoku.
I'm not young. I'm finally happy with what I'm doing and where I'm at, with a caveat: I wish I had been doing it when I was twenty. I don't have as much time to accomplish what I wish to. I hope I'm blessed with staying healthy and sharp in old age, because apparently, I'm not be able to retire, and never, ever wanted to retire anyway.
However, sometimes your body and mind insist. Having ruined my previous years, I don't have a choice but to gamble, or to continue to live sad.
Anyway, my real rest comes tomorrow. Yesterday, even with helping my Dad I wrote 300 words nonfiction and edited another 600.
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