Today is Sunday the tenth of June 2007 and I have become a senior citizen.
Yep it’s my birthday and my 60′th to boot.
I honestly never thought I’d make it this far so I am celebrating! How much longer will I go? How much more life is left in me? If it weren’t for the reflection of that old man that I see when I look into a mirror I would swear I was still twenty years old. A slightly bruised and battered twenty but twenty none the less.
Okay…. I can’t go as fast as I used to but I can still do as much it just takes a little longer.
I don’t have as much hair as I used to but not having to bother with it much gives me some of that extra time I need to get things done.
I don’t remember as much as I used to but now that I have a computer I don’t have to. I can just buy as much memory as I need.
I can’t see at a distance without my glasses but that was also the case when I was twenty. At least I can still read without them.
I no longer need to race headlong into life to find out what lays ahead because I am there. Would I have done some things differently along the way? I think everyone would, given the chance. When I reach 80 will I want to have done some things differently between now and then, probably. But just as I was not here until now I won’t be there until then, so I don’t know yet what they would be, so I’ll just do the best I can as in the past and be satisfied with that then as I am with this now.
I don’t need nearly as much as I used to think I did. Fancy house, big mortgage, new car, monthly payments, expensive suits, the latest gadgets and fads. I have found over the years that living on the trailing edge of technology is far cheaper, does not require constant upgrading and changing and gives more than satisfactory performance.
Example: I just purchased, at a garage sale, a Pioneer AM/FM stereo tuner/amplifier along with a matching six CD changer/player, both in very good condition with a common remote control, for a mere $1.00 each. I’m sure when new they sold for several hundred dollars. They were being replaced by an iPOD (more hundreds of dollars). Hey.. I just started using CD’s a few years ago and still have many cassette tapes that I listen to.
The computer I am doing this blog from is almost ten years old and was obtained new at that time for a slightly exorbitant shipping fee of $75.00. It was a free promotional item for opening an E-TRADE account. I got one, my son got one, my daughter got one, and my sister got one. They have since moved on to bigger and better equipment and I now have three out of four of those machines. They all do what ever I need done. I don’t think they would do high powered graphics for video games but then I don’t play video games. They probably would be pretty slow when downloading massive video and audio files, but I have no need to do that and in my location I only have a very slow dial-up service anyway.
So what do I really want/need in the way of a house, a car, clothes and gadgets?
A small house and a large garage on an acre of land with no mortgage.
Got the house, garage, and land and just a tiny mortgage.
A small used car with no monthly payment.
Got the car and no monthly payments.
Simple clothes at reasonable prices.
Got more than I can wear, mostly from garage sales.
Gadgets ( computer equip, audio equip, video equip, software, recordings, etc.)
Got more stuff than I really need, purchased for pennies on the dollar or almost free via rebates.
What else do I want/need to do what I want done?
Food for thought for a future post.
Originally posted: June 10th, 2007