My One Regret

After Kathy died, I wanted to run away. I had a plan to sell my house and buy an RV and hit the road. I had a list of people to visit and a list of places to visit. A plan for how to do that was beginning to become clear in my mind. I thought that in a few years I would get tired of van life and at that point I would just stop and settle down wherever I ended up. I would get a job, live in my RV, and make new friends. I thought that it would be easier to be lonely among strangers than to feel lonely among people who I knew well and who ignored me. But I did not go through with my plan. That is a regret that I have today.

Moving here proved to me that you can live almost anywhere and that nowhere is any better or any worse than where you were. People in general are nice and friendly and I have found that to be true here. I have a plan for how to stay here for the foreseeable future. I do not regret moving here.

I have noticed that once you make a big move it seems much easier to move again. Once you uproot yourself it is much less stressful to uproot yourself again. If people who I knew for 50 years could forget me, I am sure that people who I just met will have no problem forgetting me. I also notice that the outside things that influenced my life there do not have a pull on my life here. I have escaped the gravitational pull of the past and I am sailing across uncharted seas.

Counting My Blessings

I have been through some hard times in recent years. The financial collapse of 2008 wiped us out financially. My wife’s nagging illnesses and ultimate death wiped me out emotionally. My recent move uprooted me from familiar surrounding and forced me to adjust to a new way of life.

But as I survey my situation I realize that the things that happened to me have made me able to thrive in an environment where others struggle. I do not need a wife to be content. I don’t need a second income just to make ends meet. I have friends who think about me and who reach out to me here. My life is pretty good.

I know couples where they both must work just to survive. I know older people who still work to pay off debts. I know plenty of couples who both work to support their lavish lifestyle. I can’t do things that they can do. I don’t need to do what they do to be happy.

I am counting my blessing this morning. I have much to be thankful for today.

Changing Tastes

Several years ago I went from being a coffee connoisseur to not being able to tell the difference between fresh coffee and grocery store coffee. As I began to have to cook I was surprised to find out that I did not like anything that I cooked. Lately I made some cookies that tasted okay to me but other people told me they tasted better than the bakery cookies they had eaten. My daughter had me over for dinner a couple of times to eat what ordinarily I would not eat, and I ate it all.

This afternoon the penny dropped. So, I looked up the loss of taste in older people and there it was. It is normal to some extent to lose some of your sense of taste as you get older for some people. It is not unusual, and it is not illness related for me. I am taking a drug that may affect my sense of taste. I will talk to my doctor about that.

I thought at one time that my tastes were evolving, and I could enjoy food that I used to hate and that may be true also. But this is something new for me to deal with as I move on in life.

Pop Psychology Goes Bust

Love what you do, and you will never work a day in your life. Pursue and follow your passion. How many times have I heard these and other pop psychology precepts telling us how to be happy and to find fulfillment? Somewhere out there is the one person who will complete you and be compatible to you. Everything happens for a reason. And on and on it goes.

How about find what you are good at and do that? Maybe, find what you have a knack for doing and do that and get as good as you can? How about meet and marry someone and work at your marriage to make it fulfilling and satisfying?

I think that often, in our pursuit of happiness, we sometimes get the cart before the horse. We see the fake images on Instagram and we think that there are people out there who are living that dream. It’s all just an illusion. All they have done is they have learned to make enticing images and put together compelling videos. They do not live the lives that they portray on the screen. They are actors playing a role in a fantasy world from their imagination.

When I met Kathy, I was in a group of people, and I asked my friends who among the girls was not married. Kathy was one of the unmarried ones. So, things worked out that we met, and we married, and in time we had a good marriage that lasted 40 years until she died. The grief that I experienced when she died was proof that my love for her was deep and strong.

When you make happiness your goal you will find that anything you do will require work to do well. And anything that you do will take time and effort and will feel like a job. Ask anyone who thought that being a creative person would be fun how fun it is now that they have turned it into a job.

The myth of retirement is that you can play and have fun for the rest of your life. Boring. Games, or hiking, or any pursuit becomes work if you try to stick with it.

When every day is the weekend what do you have to look forward to? When every day is Christmas day no day has any significance.

A Sobering Truth

I received word today that the wife of a guy who used to be my friend has died. I would be sorry except for the way that this guy ignored me and cut me off after Kathy died. We once had been good friends. We kept in touch when life took us in different directions. We spent time together in person. But after Kathy died his line to me was severed. No calls, not emails, nothing. I saw him in person once, and he seemed so uncomfortable around me that I walked away as politely as I could. That hurt.

And now his wife of 32 years has died after a brief bout with cancer. I emailed my condolences to him.

The lesson is that you never know when the way you treat others might come back around and you might need a friend to help you through a tough time. I could be that friend in time to come. But as much as I hate to say it, he will have to reach out to me if he wants anything more than polite condolences from me.

Not Guilty!

As I was reading about the loss of male sex drive as you get older it took me back to a time in my life when my libido seemed to vanish overnight. My wife and I were not excessively sexually active over the years. Our pre-children stage was pretty intense, but that settled down into a somewhat normal sexual expression for a married couple.

But I remember a time when my libido tank dried up. My wife was convinced that I was addicted to porn and that I was secretly masturbating and thus not interested in making love with her. That was not true, but she held a grudge against me over this. I went for counseling and all he could suggest was trying Viagra or some other drug. I never did that. I didn’t care. We were growing older, and sex was not on my mind.

So recently as I was reading, I came across an article stating that men often lose their sex drive in middle age, even though some men are sexually active into their 70s. So, science proved what was a reality, though a mystery, to me all of those years.

I wish my dear wife had given me the benefit of the doubt and taken my word that there were no other women, and I had no secret porn stash. I was a normal man with a common problem and while there may have been ways to work around this problem, we never investigated those ideas. I was guilty and that was the end of that.

This is one thing that I do not miss about marriage.

The Foolish Things That Loneliness Inspires.

Loneliness can make a person do things that, under normal circumstances, they would not think of doing. It can make you forget what you know. It can make you disregard usual safeguards. I know because it has happened to me more than once.

Recently I have had several supposed women reach out to me and follow me on social media. They want to chat. But I was suspicious. Maybe they are not real. Maybe they are not women. Usually, they want money. I have been down this rabbit hole before.

But today, after checking to see if this was a real person and finding that she was, I returned her call and we talked. I found out how old she is. I found out her marital status. She has a profile on Facebook. She does not live near me. But we chatted for a few minutes. She asked me if I was looking for someone. I told her maybe.

I know nothing but what she told me and what she has online. Nothing may ever come of this. But it was nice to have an eligible woman to talk to that I am not related to. I invited her to call me sometime. I will see if she ever does.