Aging Capriciously

The title of this blog reflects the number of days that actuarial tables give me to live.  I am now 72 years of age, and when I check the charts for someone with my physical condition and prior health history, they say I can reasonable expect to live another ten years or so.  Since there are 365 days in most years, I figure that gives me 3650 days to spend doing whatever I want.  I love to read and write.  I have over 600 blogs on this site dealing with a wide variety of topics.  My blogs deal with many different themes.  I have written some fictional stories, some inspirational stories and a fair amount of what I would call social and political commentary or satire.

As we all age, we hope to leave some type of legacy for the world to remember us by.  With some people, it is their children and grandchildren.  Other people leave a treasure of money or a vast exotic collection that will inspire future generations.  Many people paint, sing, compose, write or perform.  Very few people will deny that there is some part of them that wants to be remembered for something.  A life without meaning is not a life.

An artist, writer, singer, actor or composer may have completed hundreds of books, songs or performances, but they will be lucky if they are remembered for even one.  I think of people like Theodore Sturgeon, Mary Faulkner, Victor Hugo, Jimmy Driftwood, Prince, Leonardo da Vinci, Spencer Tracy and many other great artists.  Most of us would be hard pressed to remember more than one item in the vast repertoire of these greats.  How many patents can you name that Thomas Edison had?  Probably just the light bulb!  Yet Edison is credited with 1093 patents.  Anyone remembered for even one work of creativity is beyond the norm.

Nevertheless, most of us strive to create a legacy of some sort.  It is a way to feel that our lives had some meaning and that we added some value to the world.  We don’t give up despite the odds being against us.  The vast majority of humanity will die unheralded and perhaps not even have a grave marker to note their passing.  Unfortunately, some will decide that evil is a way to be remembered and sadly they are often right.  Shakespeare said that “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”

I suffered the last few months from something that I have named “writers depression.”  I have only composed about three or four blogs in the past six months.  I do not call it writers block since I never felt blocked.  Each day I woke with several good ideas that I thought would make a fun or interesting blog.  But each time I started to sit down at my computer, I thought “what’s the point.”  Few people read my blogs.  Few make comments and after ten years of writing blogs, many of what I thought were my best endeavors were the least read of the bunch.

So today, I am starting a new effort.  I am writing my thoughts for each of the 3650 days left in my life.  Maybe these musings will be like the “Dead Sea Scrolls” and found by someone two thousand years from now.  Frankly as Rhett Butler said, “I don’t really give a dam.”  I love to write, and I am going scribble my reflections on a daily or weekly basis.  I feel no responsibility to write each day or even each week.  I simply want to create a narrative to see how I view my life as each day brings me closer to the end.  I have a lot to say, but so do we all.  By the way, this is not a memoir.  It is simply 3650 days in the life of.