I'm getting up there in age, so take that for what it's worth.

My kids think I'm old, until I beat them at basketball or rock skipping or weightlifting. Then they kinda shut up about it.

On the one hand, I'm young for my age. At 57, many people are thinking about retirement. Not me. And not ONLY because I can't ever afford to retire.

But really, I like being productive and getting paid for it.

On the other hand, I wish I could take the foot off the gas pedal once in a while. And I don't feel quite as youthful as I felt when I was 20 or 30 or 40. You get the picture.

Nagging past injuries can debilitate you when you're near 60. Stuff I'd just slough off now are constant reminders that that thing I did 40 years ago was actually quite careless. Reckless maybe.

At least, so far, the lighting myself on fire bit I did a few times in college hasn't come back to haunt me.

YET.

A while back, I realized I've forgotten a lot more than I know right now. No, this isn't dementia. Or even just simple memory loss. I just knew a fuckton more when I was 30 than I do now.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. Many of the things I thought I knew I was wrong about.

Today, I'm pretty sure that most of what I know is crap. Life is a constant cycle of discovery, ingestion, assimilation, contextualization, storage, recall, and reassessment.

Then you start anew. Again and again. Over and over until you die. You may die, or at least begin to die, the moment you stop doing this.

I used to think you started to die when you slowed down in your physical movement. I still think that's right.

But you die mentally when you become less active in your thoughts.

So, keep thinking! Don't ever stop. Your brain may not be a muscle, but it is flexible and can always take in more.

Until you stop. Then it hardens. You stop learning. And then you die.

Moving on…

The reason I'm writing here today is twofold:

1. I had that (up there) to say.
2. I want to make a habit of writing something personal here every day.

So there it is. I hope you can relate or, if you're younger than me, maybe you can store the above away in your memory banks and recall for a time when you need it.