Top Ten Reasons Why I Blog

     As I've mentioned before, I serve as one of about a dozen volunteer tutors in the Academic Support Center of our local community college. I help students with their papers, essays and tests, and coach them in how to improve their writing skills.

     Last week the coordinator of the writing center called me over to her desk. She thought it was interesting that I write a blog -- a form of writing that's relatively new and different, especially for an academic setting -- and asked me if I could convey the bogging experience in 300 or 400 words, to use in their newsletter. I decided I could, but didn't think I had to take the assignment too seriously . . .

     I introduced myself as a volunteer in the Writing Center, but admitted that in my secret life I write a blog. It’s called Sightings Over Sixty, and it covers baby boomers, retirement, health, finance, grownup children and . . . how time flies. My pen name – my nom de Internet, if you will -- is Tom Sightings. And I’m over 60 years old. Get it?

     A lot of my friends are curious about why I spend my time jotting down thoughts in cyberspace. So, what do I tell them? First of all, I point out that I’m not alone. A lot of people write blogs. (And I wonder -- why do you write a blog?) The web directory technorati counts 363 blogs about baby boomers alone. There are blogs about stamp collecting, knitting, golden retrievers and a thousand other topics.

     But if you really want to know, here are the top ten reasons why I blog.  To . . .

     10. Get something off my chest – I have a few opinions on things like health care and how people drive (in my opinion, unlike Lake Wobegon, most people are worse than average drivers!), and so I can spout off whenever I want.

     9. Make friends – I have over a hundred followers of my blog. Some of them I consider friends. In January, when I vacationed in Florida, I played golf with one of my blogging friends.

     8. Join a community – You don’t just get people to read your blog. They talk back, make comments, and usually, you end up following their blog as well. It’s a party!

     7. Make people laugh – I admit it, in my younger days I was a class clown. My teachers didn't think I was funny, but some of my classmates did. If you don't believe me, check out the Humor section of my blog, and you be the judge. But hey, gimme a break . . . it’s not easy to be funny!

     6. Make money – Yes, you can sign up for advertising programs though Google and Amazon, and earn money from your blog. Why, sometimes I earn as much as $3 in one day!

     5. Practice my writing skills – As you can see . . . I need the practice.

     4. Annoy my spouse – Since I write my blog under a different name, and I don’t identify my spouse by name, I can say anything I want!

     3. Stay out of trouble – I’m retired. Well, to be more accurate, I’m unemployed. But when you get to a certain age, you can call yourself retired instead. Blogging gives me something to do while my long-suffering spouse goes off to work.

     2. Make a name for myself – Wait a second, I write the blog under a different name, so how am I making a name for myself? Er, I guess I’d better rethink that one.

     And the Number 1 reason why I blog? I blog, therefore I am – It’s a little known fact, but all the great philosophers had their own blogs. The first blog? "In the beginning . . . .”

It's Snowing Advice

     What are you gonna do . . . we all get older. This round of the Best of Baby Boomer blogs circles around the issue of how we cope with the perils and pitfalls of aging -- and the opportunities that go with them.

     Martin Rice of fifty2ninety.com is a language lover, and as such, simply can’t stand euphemisms such as “chronologically gifted” when what is meant is “old.” Similarly, the phrase “male menopause” also drives him crazy. If you're interested in the difference between menopause and andropause (or, if you want to see a beefcake picture of a hunky male) exercise your option to run over and read Male Menopause.

     But if you ask me . . .  well, I'm not doctor, just a simple man who turns to the old sayings like:  Just because there's snow on the roof doesn't mean there isn't a fire in the furnace.

     Meanwhile, Karen at The Generation Above Me offers a window into Joseph Campbell and the power of myth. What piece of advice has helped guide Karen's life the most? It's the phrase "follow your bliss," which she says is often misinterpreted as a call to hedonism, but is really an invitation to find one's core identity. And isn't that one of the rewards of retirement, that by our stage in life we are free from the responsibilities of raising a family, and mature enough to ignore the voices of fear, duty or guilt that can muffle the call to fulfill our true being?

     On a more practical and down-to-earth level, Amy Blitchok of Modern Senior asks whether new mobility technology is trying to reinvent the wheel. Siemens is working on developing a "smart walker" that can help those with physical and cognitive challenges avoid obstacles and better navigate unfamiliar places. Visit Modern Senior, watch the video and answer the question Is a Smart Walker a Smart Idea or Technology Overkill?

     As an afterthought, I have to mention that I went to a fundraiser over the weekend for Guiding Eyes for the Blind, an organization that raises and trains dogs to help blind and visually impaired people achieve more independent lives. I met a couple of the dogs, as well as the "blind sommelier," a visually impaired woman who led us through a session of wine tasting. I also found out another interesting tidbit. As medical advances have prevented and mitigated many eye diseases and injuries, Guiding Eyes has expanded its mission to include providing companion dogs for children with autism.

     Finally, on The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide, Rita R. Robison, consumer journalist, writes about two consumer issues. In light of the massive Target hacking, Robison discovered that American companies are being targeted because banks and retailers haven’t upgraded magnetic strip credit cards to more secure cards, ones with chips. She writes about whether consumers should use their credit cards less due to security issues.

     Robison also offers her top 10 tips for reducing the chemicals used in the home to improve health -- and she covers one of my bugaboos, which is the casual use of plastic containers to store and reheat leftovers. Yuck, who wants plastic in their pasta!?!

How Cold Is It?

     I got hone from Flurida yesterday. I woke up this mirning, and teh sun was streaming in the window. I crawled out of bid and wemt downstairs to the ki0then. I knew I wqs back up no-rth, so the furst thing I dud was check our thermometer.

     Wwe habe a digitral thermometet in our kitchrn. So I lookd over and was surprised -- i0t read 65 degrees. Not bad!

     Them I loked again. No . . .  not 65 dedrees. It was 6.5 degrees! Argghh!

     If you wundor what's rong wit this posting, its becaser the keys on my keyboard ar tottally frosen up and they;'re sticking.

     Thhat's one way to know that's it's really cold here. Another way -- the storm windo not only has condensation on it. But the condensation is froxen.

     Another way you know -- the leaves on the rhododendron are all curled up, huddlefg against the colsd. Just like I am!

Impressions of Florida

     I've spent a little more than two weeks in the Sunshine state. I'm on vacation so I haven't done much besides go to the beach and play golf, including a round with Douglas of Boomer Musings and two of his friends who were kind enough to let me join their foursome. I also visited with friends and relatives, and dined in restaurants with fishnets hanging from the ceiling.

     I won't bore you with the details, just leave you with a few impressions. (I had plenty of time to organize my photos yesterday since the New England/Denver game was too one-sided to hold my interest.) Anyway, one salient impression you get is that a lot of tourists visit Florida (over 87 million in 2011, the most of any state according to the Florida tourist board). And that brings in a lot of traffic. Get a load of this intersection on Route 41 south of Ft. Myers. Count 'em -- 18 traffic lights!

     And another thing -- I haven't seen so many American cars in a long time. I guess it makes sense, since a lot of visitors on the West coast of Florida hail from Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and other Midwestern states. I didn't see anyone from California, Oregon or Washington. But I saw some from Utah, North Dakota and New Mexico.

     But as we all know, Florida goes from the Atlantic ocean (where it was too cold for anyone to sit on the beach) . . .

     around along the Gulf of Mexico, for a total coastline of some 1,800 miles.

     And there's plenty in between. I spent some time in Orlando and went to Disney's Celebration . . .

     where they were filming a promotional video.

    They had a farmer's market there.

     And they were filming a promotional video.

     So as you probably know there are plenty of golf courses in Florida (some 1,250 at last count).

     And boating is another favorite activity.

     There's also the "real" Florida where they have horses . . .

     and still grow oranges.

     Oh, did I tell you about the promotional video they were filming?

 
     Okay, enough already. I'm going home tomorrow.

Are You an Orphan?

     My ex-wife was in her mid-40s when she lost her mother. Her father had died long before, even before I'd met her, but her mother had gone on to live a long life full of friends and activities. She got cancer when she was 85, went into the hospital, and succumbed fairly quickly. She was survived by her daughter, my wife, and two sons.

      My wife took the loss of her mother quite hard -- partly because she missed her mother, but also largely because she said she felt like an orphan.

     At the time both my parents were still alive, and while I tried to support her I didn't fully appreciate what she was talking about. "I understand how you're sad that your mother died," I said. "But you're grown up now. You have two kids of your own. How can you be an orphan?"

     I realized that, technically speaking, she was an orphan in that both her parents were dead. But to me an orphan is a child. The special tragedy of an orphan is that the parents died before their time, and there's no parent left to raise the child.

    And yet I could see she really felt this way, that in some sense she'd felt abandoned, and left alone in this world. Still, she had a husband, and two children of her own.

     Ten years later, my own mother died at age 88. She'd survived more than one round of cancer, and suffered from osteoporosis, and the last few years of her life were pretty painful. In a way, for her, death was a relief.

     Two years later, my dad died at age 91. He was healthy up until the last few months of his life, when he too got cancer and went pretty quickly. I remember getting together with my two sisters and packing up their house, getting it ready to sell. It was a very sad occasion.

     I was sad that my parents had died. I missed them. But I still didn't feel like an orphan. My parents had lived long, fulfilled lives. I was now worried about my own family, my daughter in college and my son in high school. How do you feel like an orphan when you've got a kid in college?

     What got me thinking about this was the book I read, and the item I posted the other day -- about relationships cut short vs. relationships that play themselves out and end on a more natural timetable.

     To me, an orphan suffers from a relationship cut short. Maybe my wife was reacting not so much to her mother's death, but to her father's premature death -- he'd died when she was in high school -- although she never said as much.

     Of course, death is the final parting. But there are plenty of other partings in our lives. The ones that trouble us are the ones that bring us up short, that end too soon, that leave so much unsaid and undone. (After all, isn't that what our sorrow about the Kennedys is all about?)

     People sometimes wonder why I have a pretty good relationship with my ex-wife. She and I talk about our kids, and worry about them together, almost as though we were still married. I helped her move; I've helped her out financially; she's had me over to her house. I even met her new boyfriend; and she's met B.

     I think the reason why we're on good terms is because we both knew, after 29 years of marriage, that we'd squeezed as much out of the relationship as we possibly could. We'd had a great run, produced two wonderful kids. But we were done. Our marriage was not cut short by some tragedy; or even by some sudden change of heart. It died of old age.

     Honestly, I don't know if my ex-wife feels "orphaned" by our divorce. I don't think she does. I know I don't. There's a life cycle to everything. While it's sad when things come to an end, we know that nothing lasts forever. The tragedy is when something ends before its time.

     People wonder about the meaning of life. But does something have to be permanent to have meaning? Do we have to have eternal life to have a meaningful life? I don't think so.