BoomSpeak

I had my annual Medicare “wellness” visit, and I found the whole business rather depressing. I know it’s a good thing, but it feels like the documentation of my decline.

At some point she asked, how is your stamina? I’m thinking, why? Does it look like I’m dying?

But I said, oh, you know how it is for us old folks. I walk 30-40 miles a week, I play golf twice a week, I do boatloads of stretching and strengthening exercises, I’m surviving the second Trump administration and I have been taking care of Dale and everything in Dale’s house since he broke his pelvis last Christmas … while recovering from a broken arm.

Backwards and in high heels.

She laughed. I think it was just a form question, anyway.

The documentation of my decline seems pretty defeatist. After all, a check-up doesn’t necessarily mean something is wrong. It can just mean it’s time for some scheduled maintenance.

I’ve already suggested we should be more like cheese, aging well and becoming more interesting with time. But apparently cheese is taken. So I’ve decided to reframe this experience and from now on think of myself as a car.

When it comes to cars, I like a nice ride, but nothing too fancy. Simple, functional. Reasonably attractive. I keep it clean, but I’m not a fanatic.

I also take my car in for scheduled service. Nothing bad. A few fluids and adjustments to keep the machine running smoothly for the next 100,000 miles.

With people and with cars, mileage isn’t the same thing as decline. It doesn’t mean the vehicle has failed. Sure, we aren’t new anymore. We require maintenance and sometimes need repairs. But we’re not done yet.

And I always hold onto a car as long as it runs.

Donna Pekar is an aging badass (for real) who lives in California and writes Retirement Confidential.

Tools. We’ve all got tools, from can openers and pencil sharpeners to tooth brushes and telephones. Not to mention a shoe box crammed with nails, screws and glue for do-it-yourself repairs. My dad took that a step further restoring factory equipment in our family garage with a menage of drill press, grinder, wire cutters, nuts, washers and bolts. I barely managed to park my bike in a spare spot off to the side.

In the middle of all that, I learned the value of second-hand tools that my dad had scrounged from other members in the metal-working trade. Little by little, I became familiar with his tools, came to savor and cherish his found-treasures like family heirlooms and eventually blended them into my own personal collection. Why? Because they were tools and there’s a bit of ‘man the tool maker’ in all of us.

So, anyhow, I’ve found that the inclination to ‘design and make’ is bigger than me. And now as I am moving into a senior complex that has its own workshops and tool cribs, I won’t need my own collection anymore. Of course, there’s the tug of attachment and urge to preserve classic tools…but hey…time to move on.

So, I invited my sons-in-law and their brothers and fathers to help me cull historic and more recent implements…basically to clean me out, knowing that all would be put to good use. On that day, I made sure to keep busy elsewhere…some things don’t have to be watched too closely. But my particular gleaners knew good tools when they saw them…especially when they were free for the taking for projects in the making.

In the end, I am left with a scarred work bench (vice bolted in the corner). Go figure. Actually, I’m glad at one level…feeling cut-off at another. But maybe it’s time to admit that my kids, and their kids, have enough of my jewelry boxes and desk organizers and magazine holders and plant stands and, and, and. Yeah, it’s time to find new projects, new friends, at the senior complex where for twenty years I showed a movie once a month followed by a lively discussion. I presume most of those folks are gone by now. Could be. Would be fun to find a few still gracing the place. Anyhow, it’s time to make new friends and support the guy leading film discussions. Been there, done that.

Retired trainer, and writing instructor, Joe Novara lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Writings include novels, short stories, a memoir and various poems, plays, anthologies and articles. Read more at https://freefloatingstories.wordpress.com/

For those about to or contemplating retirement, there’s no shortage of advice, so I won’t be the first one to warn you that the end of a lifelong routine can take some getting used to – or worse.

If you’ve already retired you may be nodding in agreement. It’s well known and studied endlessly, when you stop working it can change brain health, as well as pose a risk of cognitive decline and depression.

Kidding! Not really kidding though. When you stop using your brain to create, communicate and socialize with fellow workers, it’s an abrupt change to the entire pattern of your life. You cannot assume the transition will be a piece of cake.

Studies of retirees find that their verbal memory (recalling a set of words after a certain amount of time) declined faster post-retirement compared to when they were working. I can vouch for that effect when I’m unable to come up with a name or a term that used to be top of mind.

Experts believe the key is having a plan, and they don’t mean taking a long vacation on an island and then coming home to figure it out. In fact, they recommend setting up your plan while you are still working so that you can dive right into retirement on day one. You want to pivot directly into the new lifestyle, not wallow in some rudderless state.

Volunteer work and staying social is key according to experts. If social contact declines the chance for depression onset increases. Trying new activities and acquiring new skills can stave off the isolation that can set in when you don’t have a workplace anymore.

It sounds counterintuitive to say retirement is work, but if you don’t have a plan for how to use your free time and stay engaged with a community, your brain is just not going to find life very challenging or rewarding. After working for 50 years or more, that would be borderline tragic.

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. His most recent mystery novel, Rio Puerco Demise is available on Amazon. His first mystery novel, Head Above Water, is also available on Amazon. But that’s not all. You can also purchase the Best of BoomSpeak on Amazon.

I’m wondering if through the years, some of these sayings have changed because our world has. For example, “You better eat everything on your plate. There are starving children in Korea.” Do parents now say the same things to their kids except change Korea to Africa? I suspect these quirky expressions become part of our boomer DNA and then one day, these valuable words just automatically leave our lips to be passed on to some unsuspecting child. I have made a short list of some from my memory bank. I am sure you will recognize many of them.

“You made your bed, now lie in it.”

“Smooth move Ex-Lax!”

“If the shoe fits, wear it.”

“Don’t kiss the boys or you will get pregnant.”

“If I have to stop this car….”

“Were you born in a barn?”

“Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

“If they jumped off the bridge, you would too.”

“Children should be seen and not heard.” (would Dr. Spock object to this?)

“If you had another brain it would be lonesome.”

“You’re so far back in the woods you can’t see the trees.”

“This too shall pass.”

“Waste not want not.”

“Don’t be a tattle tail.”

“Close the door, I don’t pay good money to heat the outdoors.”

“Either in or out.”

“Money doesn’t grow on trees.”

“If you cross your eyes they will stay that way.”

“Wear clean underwear in case you have to go to the hospital.”

“Be home before the street lights come on.”

“If you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all.”

“Your eyes are bigger than your stomach.”

“You would lose your head if it wasn’t attached.”

“Don’t take any wooden nickels.”

OK, you’re it, now it’s your turn…..

From the Best of BoomSpeak, February 2010

Joyce Welling believes that once a hippie, always a hippie. She continues to be on a magical mystery tour, dipping into the pool of our collective nostalgia.  

Hey, it’s my stuff and you can’t just take it!

I worked long and hard and I may have failed utterly, but these are my failures and you may not use them to create something of your own. Worse, you may not take my successes; you may especially not take my successes as they are unutterably precious to me. You may not take a part of my work, or a bit of my work, or a byte of my work, or cut with your sharp scissors a section of my painting, or make a photocopy of my drawing, or download a painting of mine to use in your collage. You may not take a clever or bright turn of phrase of mine or, yeagods, an entire block of my writing, and pass it off as your own or bury it in your text as neat and snug as if it were yours.

Sure—all creative artists glean inspiration from their environments and from other creators. But to blithely steal, to download, when it is oh so easy to do so, and to run with it—that is not what inspiration is all about. Inspiration may include copying when you are a student. Fair use enough! But to be inspired by someone else’s work – by a painting or an essay for instance – does not have anything to do with copying that image or downloading that image by means of any current or future technological device.

The great books, the great paintings, the great any things, have powerful unmistakable voices. Putting together a pastiche or collage or crazy quilt of pieces of someone else’s work does not constitute creativity. It will lack a voice. And if you do not know what a voice is, I feel for you, I really do.

Just because it is easy to do so does not mean it is okay to click, copy and download anything on this web site that I have created to use in your creative product. I am old and cranky and probably idiotic, but I slaved away in school, slaved away in soul-deadening jobs and now I write and now I paint and, like it or not (I don’t really care what you like!) my creative output is mine. I paint my own pictures. I write my own essays. My voice, for better and for worse, is my own. Now run along and get yours!

Excerpted from full essays at Flying Falling Floating.

From the Best of BoomSpeak, 2008 

Surrealist painter and writer Mary E. Carter shows her work (including goose girls, chicken ladies and not so winged creatures) at Flying Falling Floating. The former advertising copywriter is also a published book author.