Someone told me I am not aging gracefully and I snorted because there is more truth in that than I like to admit.
I am not particularly enamored with a body that refuses to respond as it once did and sometimes find it hard to look at certain pictures that illustrate the mutiny.
Ego and appetite sometimes go to war, with ego telling appetite to put down the pizza and appetite threatening to rip ego’s arm off and beat it to death.
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When I agreed to surgery I did so understanding that I would need to be more conscientious about eating because I knew my exercise was going to be curtailed a bit.
Since I haven’t stepped on a scale since pre-op I can’t tell you officially whether there was significant damage or not.
If we use the pants test I can confirm I am wearing the same khakis and jeans as before which suggests there was some success.
But that is not a benchmark I want to use, especially since it is apparent I have reached an age where the conversations with my doctors have changed a bit.
The Real Challenge
The challenge for me isn’t just that I love to eat, it is that concern about certain situations has made pizzas and hamburgers sound even more delectable.
I have been trying to combat that by increasing the amount of exercise I get and acknowledging that I do better when I see progress.
Doesn’t have to be much, could be as little as a five pound loss and that will kick start things and push me into a higher gear.
Don’t mistake this to mean I am not exercising because it is a daily activity but I haven’t been good about adjusting my caloric intake relative to my age and exercise level.
I Don’t Like Pictures
There is a teenage boy who calls me dad who tells me he hates pictures.
I want to respect his choices but I find his desire to try and avoid every picture to be more than I am willing to tolerate.
Most of the time we find a balance and he’ll join family photos and give a real smile, but I wish he didn’t dislike them so much.
Maybe it is because I am in a place where I am very aware of how many family members are no longer with us and cognizant about how many changes come with the kids growing up.
It wasn’t long ago that they were truly little but those days are gone. The little voices no longer exist, especially in the case of my teen whose voice isn’t quite as deep as mine but is getting there.
I told him the other day the time will come when he looks at pictures of himself and wonders how 20 years could have gone by so damn quickly.
Are Pictures Worth A 1000 Words?
Sometimes I look at old pictures and wonder who some people are and am reminded about why we were taught to write down their names on the back of the photo or on the pages of the album.
Then I look at the current situation where I hardly print photos anymore and think about whether I ought to make some sort of digital notation.
Or I insert the photo like the one above and say I kind of like that picture of me. It was taken in the Fall of 2015 in my old CRV and clearly shows I was in need of a haircut.
I am not kidding. I keep it short and tight now.
That is the one thing about age that I don’t really care much about. Not having hair is a gift that makes riding in convertibles and wearing hats really easy.
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Anyhoo, when we talk about whether pictures are worth a 1000 words I start thinking about Harry Potter.
Or should I say I start thinking about the magic pictures in Harry Potter and how cool it would be if our pictures could be like those.
Conversations With Springsteen
I may write an entire post that is focused upon the Bruce Springsteen Bio that I am listening to.
Initially I had planned on buying Born To Run thinking it might be more enjoyable and easier to absorb through reading but then I heard Bruce was the narrator and changed my mind.
I listen to it in the car or when I am walking and it is awesome. It feels like Bruce and I are having a conversation about his life and his career.
It is fascinating to me to listen to him talk about his childhood and all that led to him becoming who he is.
I think it is about 15 hours long and I am only up to the mid seventies or so. During the last section he talked about how he wrote Born To Run (The song)
What really makes this work for me is I appreciate his passion and how hard he worked to get to where he is.
And I appreciate his sharing his insecurities and talking in a way that makes him so very relateable, not to mention his wordcraft.
There are very few celebrities that I really want to meet, but he is definitely high on the list.
Maybe he is putting on an act for the book and maybe he is not. But I loved his saying artists owe the people the best they have night in and night out.
Like I said, this might deserve it is own post so I’ll let Bruce help us move into something else.
“You lay claim to your stories; you honor, with your hard work and the best of your talent, their inspirations, and you fight to tell them well from a sense of indebtedness and thankfulness. The ambiguities, the contradictions, the complexities of your choices are always with you in your writing as they are in your life. You learn to live with them. You trust your need to have a dialogue about what you deem important.” ― Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run
A Dialogue About What Is Important
That is part of the reason I write. It is why some days I pump out 10,000 words and some days I don’t.
There are conversations I want to have that may never happen so I take some of what I want to say and put the dialogue down where maybe it might be seen.
Of course that is contingent upon my actually publishing it where people can see it and that is not always a given because some conversations aren’t a given because of others but because of me.
And sometimes I search for photos or try to take them to tell the story because there are moments where the words are best pulled from the memories, feeling and emotions of those who look upon them.
