Reader Vince posted a comment on my 74th birthday entry, asking about my strategy for retiring and getting old. Carol and I do whatever we can to grow old in style and (more to the point) functional and (most pointedly) alive. It’s complicated, but I’ll get as much of it as I can into this single (rather long) entry.
So…we’re retired. Topic #1: Stress. Do what you can to keep it at a minimum. I admit that’s harder if you raised kids, which we did not. We’ve been together now for 57 years, married for 50. We discuss all kinds of things. We laugh. We cuddle. We see to each other’s needs. We take each other very, very seriously. We go to church. We pray. Death may do us part—but not forever.
We have no debt to worry about. We don’t spend extravagantly. We use our cars until they fall apart, which for our 4Runner took 25 years. We’ve bought two lightly used cars from CarMax, and both have been big wins. We didn’t have to go through the usual BS kabuki with conventional dealerships, which is guaranteed to raise your blood pressure. We don’t buy things for the sake of buying them. We bought a Radio Shack stereo the November after our wedding…and it’s still living happily on the entertainment center fifty years later, playing music from dawn to bedtime. Our TV is now 15 years old, and (granted that we don’t watch much TV) it’s still very good at its job.
Topic #2: Brain health. I’ve seen studies suggesting that living with music playing constantly helps with brain health. As I said above, our ancient but flawless stereo plays classical music from our local classical station, KBAQ, from the time we get up until the time that we turn in. Writing helps too, and lord knows I do plenty of that. There is a study of Catholic nuns that’s been underway since 1986, indicating that the nuns who wrote emotionally positive text (often in their daily journals) were less likely to develop Alzheimer’s than nuns who didn’t write, and were more likely to live longer. Most of my writing is emotionally positive, so I have some hope that this will apply to me as well, even though I’m not a nun and don’t play one on TV.
I have no studies to support it, but my guess is that programming also contributes to brain health. I still program for fun (generally in Lazarus/Free Pascal) and read whatever current Pascal texts that I can find. I still tinker with electronics and build things, sometimes from kits, and sometimes from scratch. Ham radio helps too. I stay busy.
I teach myself things. I read books on all kinds of stuff, as those who have visited here at Fortress Duntemann may have noticed. I taught myself the Pascal-ish language Lua, though Free Pascal pretty much leaves it in the dirt by comparison. I created a spreadsheet to design solar-twin star systems with planets, which I used in writing The Cunning Blood. You get the idea. Brains matter. Use ‘em or lose ‘em.
Topic #3: Body health. I think that genetics plays more of a role in general health than most people are willing to admit. My Polish immigrant grandfather worked at grimy jobs his whole working life, and lived to just a month short of his 90th birthday. I take after that side of the family. People yell at me for saying it sometimes, but my research suggests that you can do worse than your genes, but you can’t do better. I have good genes, which helps a lot with regard to health. We never smoked or did drugs. I generally have a glass of red wine with non-fish dinners most nights, but I don’t overdo it, and will taper it if my liver numbers start drifting out of range.
Food. We eat meat, fish, eggs, dairy, and salad. We don’t have a starch course unless we have friends or family over for dinner, and when we do it’s generally polenta (i.e., corn grits). I fry one egg in butter every morning for breakfast. Lunch is usually a slice of cold meat (no bread) rolled up with a slice of cheese, plus some tree nuts. I learned back in the ‘90s that carbs make me fat, especially sugar. So I drink water instead of sodas, and keep starches (breads, pasta, potatoes, etc.) to a minimum. We do have desserts when eating with friends or family, but usually not when we’re alone.
We pay attention to ingredients lists, and avoid things with umpty ingredients that we can’t identify. (I call such foods “chemistry sets.”) We consume organic dairy. Our salads are baby spinach topped by carrot shreds, sliced radishes, diced mushrooms, olive slices (for Carol) and diced red bell pepper (for me.) We buy whatever we can in glass rather than plastic. We don’t snack much, and when we do, it’s almost always either tree nuts or sugarless snacks with only a few ingredients, and nothing freaky. Lately it’s been PopCorners. 3 ingredients: Popped corn, vegetable oil, and salt.
Exercise. We do weight training once a week at the gym, with a trainer who specializes in older people. I walk a lot, which is tricker in hot weather, but I shoot for 6,000 steps a day, and make that target three or four days out of seven.
Sleep. We’re morning people and hop out of bed at 6 or 7 AM, shooting for eight hours a night. Sleep is not optional, and we structure our lives to allow those eight hours to happen almost every night.
Topic #4: Supplements. I take 5 grams of creatine hydroxide every day, and 10 on gym day, generally in my midmorning iced coffee. There is strong evidence that creatine acts against cancer. I also take a standard multivitamin, a D supplement, quercetin/bromelain, zinc, magnesium, and until recently, a B-50. (Carol takes others as recommended by her doc.) My blood pressure is low to normal. We both get physicals once a year, with a broad blood panel and other tests. I pay close attention to my numbers, and take action when test results go out of bounds; e.g, vitamin B-6 and prostate-specific antigen (PSA).
Topic #5: Emotional health. This one is gnarly for a lot of people, but not for me. Carol and I are deeply in love, which is the powerful central element in our emotional health. I don’t do as much on social media as I used to, largely because a great deal of it is slobber-screaming about politics. I do not doomscroll. Nor do I talk about politics. As close as I come is the climate issue, which I research as science and sometimes post about but don’t get involved in tribal fights over. Allowing other people to make me angry gives them control over me, and I won’t abide that. Anger is deadly. My father’s father died of anger. I strive for an upbeat outlook on life and don’t allow current events to bring me down.
Friends. I’ve said this here many times, and I will say it again: Friendship is the cornerstone of the human spirit. I have a circle of friends whom I greatly value, granting that a couple of them have followed my writing for thirty or more years without ever meeting me. They’re still friends. I value them more than they probably understand.
And that’s as good a summary as I can fit here. Yes, I will admit that life is a crapshoot, but it’s a gamble I’m willing to take—and so far I’ve done very well. What works for me may not work for you. Live an examined life, and don’t let other people control you. Watch your numbers. Have friends. Stay active. Stay busy. That’s most of it. You may be surprised by what you discover in the process. I certainly was.
