Artie: “Here Don, I finished my autobiography. This is my whole story. What do you think?” Artie plops down hundreds and hundreds of typed pages on my desk. Me: “Wow, that’s a lot of pages.” Artie: “How long will it take you to publish ‘The Life of Artie’? All my …
I hate it when I write like I’m giving sage advice about aging. Yet, for today, I can’t help it. Another friend has retired without thinking through the consequences of leaving a career before figuring out what comes next. Based on a sample size of around 20, here are the …
There’s this old grumpy guy up on the mountainside about two miles from my house. He has a garden that gets eaten up by squirrels each summer. He traps them and brings them down the mountain and drops them off next to my driveway. I don’t mean a couple of squirrels. I mean a …
I have a pet peeve. It may be intensified by my age but I feel the need to share it with you. Say I’m at a nice restaurant. The tableware has been set, and I have a dirty fork. Like old egg yolk hangs between the tines. I ask the waiter, “May I have a …
One of the many beautiful outcomes of my aging is the two characters in my life story became one. For most of my life there were two characters that made up my “me story.” The first character was created in my self-talk, the inner voice that took me to sleep and was …
Me to me (self-talk): Holy smokes, I think my stomach is expanding, but I don’t want to get on the scale until I’m confident I’ve lost a few pounds, but how is this happening to me when I don’t think I’m eating any more than I ever did, yet there’s definitely a little bump …
I wonder what percentage of people over the age of 70 have some form of chronic pain? When you get old like me, pain is a hard thing to calculate. How do I know my pain is worse than the guy down the street? Is the pain in my leg actually coming from my brain? …
No one has ever accused me of being a perfectionist. After all these years, I’m comforted by author Tal Ben-Shahar to know that this is a good thing. In his book, Being Happy, I learn that attempting to do things perfectly is a troublesome trait. So, to tout my outstanding …
Aging has allowed me daily periods of quiet contemplation without any twinges of guilt. In the mornings, caressing a mug of coffee with just a touch of cream, I find my favorite chair and sit and let the silence wash over me. I release my mind from its work cage and let it …
A few years ago, I went to a three-day workshop on the strategies of negotiation. On the first day, I was told that in life and in business, you receive not what you deserve, but what you negotiate. After learning some ways of being crafty, almost deceptive, the class split …
