I decided to use this blog to chronicle the year that I become sixty. I have a clear image of how I want to be at sixty, and I've been thinking about that version of me for a long time. I hope to use this blog as inspiration and motivation to make some simple behavioral changes. My aspirations are pretty simple. I'm not trying to do anything that I haven't done before, and I'm not expecting unreasonable results. I'm not trying to become young again - I want to get older. I want to get happier as I get older, and I don't think that should be that hard to do.
Should is an interesting word, of course, and although it seems like it should be easy I should have done it long ago. If I had continued doing what I've done before I wouldn't need to do what I have to do now. They were good, constructive behaviors that I actually enjoyed at the time. Paths and choices necessitated leaving some of the things I loved behind like ballast dropped to clear a hurdle. Some of it was simply a loss of focus, though. There are things I could have hung on to as I reached for new goals and challenges - not with the same level of commitment, perhaps, but with some continuity.
So here's what I think I should be able to do this year. I should be able to get back to a level of fitness that I reached in the year after a mild heart attack woke me up when I was forty six. I don't want to be forty six again, I'll have more aches and pains than I did then and I know getting fit will be harder than it was then, but I should be able to get - and stay - fit enough to do the activities I want to do in my sixties and beyond. Simple activities, like walking and hiking and biking without having to wonder what the hell I've done to myself.
I should be able to tap back into that creative place in my mind again, and reintroduce my hand to line and crosshatch, light and shadow. I should be able to draw again, at least as well as I did when I put the pen down to pick up the circuit board. I should be able to shoot again, at least as well as I did when I put the camera down. I've never totally stopped doing either, I just lost the passion I once had. I refocused that passion on the IT career I chose instead, a more lucrative path that provided better circumstances for my family over the last three decades.
My passion for my career is still strong, in fact the challenges are more interesting and exciting as I approach both the peak and the end - with a new beginning beyond. Beyond may start when I turn sixty, or maybe when I'm sixty one. I intend to pick up at the end of my career where I left off when I began it. I want to go back to that place where I was filled with different, more creative aspiration. I want to go into that beyond fit enough to engage that aspiration, with the knowledge and confidence I've developed in raising a healthy family and traversing a successful career.
It's my approach to aging. I want to go back to a place I once was, a place I loved, and pick up where I left off - but, smarter, more confident, and better funded. The old and young still live inside of me. The idealism of youth and wisdom of age. It's all still there, tucked away inside, and as long as I keep the vessel healthy I'll be able to continue to tap the contents. Hopefully I'll find new ways to put it all together, but this year I make sure it's all intact when I get there.
