Less than a month before my 62nd birthday. A few weeks. I’ve been writing about my birthday every year since I was in college. If I looked back in my notebooks from the month or two before my birthday each year, I would find how I felt about my birthday coming up that year, for that age. At 62(soon to be), I am feeling my age. Or at least feeling older. I obvioussly don’t know what it feel like to be 62 since I’ve never been there before. I am rapidly approaching the day when I can tell you my feelings on what it’s like to be 62. For now, i can only tell you how i feel about getting closer to it.
I feel like, the older I get, the more I want to spend my time on more things that really enjoy doing, and less time on things I don’t enjoy so much…like work…that keeps me from writing and sharing my time with family. Even if I get to write more, and if I call it work, it won’t seem as much like work as…say going to my job at the nursing home every day…or even working on the rental houses. I’m just especially happy that we’ve been able to keep the other houses rented while we’re working on this one. And I’m happy also to have a good job to go to…a job that pays me a reasonable amount of money for the work I do. No doubt about it, I am a very fortunate man.
I am even more blessed to be able to do the things I am capable of doing, though I wonder for how much longer I will be able to do them. I think arthritis and other things like that are creeping up on me. As i type, my fingers hurt. Even at that, I am fortunate. I always try to keep things in perspective. There are always many people better off than me…and I’d like to be better off as well, but there are also many people who are much worse off than me, so I always feel very fortunate to have whatever I have in terms of good health, and a decent job, and a beautiful family, and on and on about so many things. I just want more.
And I want to be clear about it. /There is nothing wrong about wanting more. We are born wanting more, and most of us will get to the end of our life wanting more. My father-in-law has mentioned it often in his later years. He always says that he don’t really need anything except more time. More.
More. That is a whole other story.
