In the last week, I've done some recreational coding. I'm sure that sounds unremarkable if you know about my projects and web sites and all of that. But the truth is that I haven't done it much in the last year. If you look at my Github profile, you can see the green dots showing when I committed code. Starting around March of last year, the frequency of that dropped off. This is part of a wider phenomenon around the things that I used to do more of, like video stuff (and the rum doc editing), photography, writing beyond the blog, trying to play the drums, messing with electronic things, etc. I can't really describe what changed.
Aging, instinctively I want to say sucks, but if I'm being intellectual about it, I don't think that at all. I've lived a bit, and I fucking know some things. I've earned that. But I still view the universe with curiosity more than ever, humbled by all of the things I don't know. It's the physical part that I'm not crazy about. I can see it around my eyes, and as my hair continues to get thinner on top, it may be migrating to my ears. Sometimes I feel the change in weather in my joints. My minimum focus distance is now around 24 inches when I'm tired. None of these things will ever reverse. These are all reminders that I only have so many keystrokes left, and I can't know for sure how many there really are.
I think the noise around this may be part of the problem. It's already exhausting living in my brain, but now throw in the bits about mortality. Sure, I have literally decades left (hopefully), as I assume that I'm half-way through adulthood, but you don't think about that when you're 20-something. I'm the parent of a teenager who will be an adult in a few years whether he is or I am ready or not. That's a milestone I never even thought about. Now add in all of the usual stuff about work and financial health and the apparent dissolution of classic American ideals around freedom and equality. It's a lot.
But if one is heading toward "retirement" in a tangible way at this age, the clarity around what that actually means has been valuable. I read something about an observational study that concluded that people who live with intent and purpose in retirement live a lot longer. That makes total sense to me. I've always said that my goal is not to sit around and consume things in my old age. I just want the financial stability to be able to choose what to do without consequence. People make the joke about being a Walmart greeter (or in Central Florida parlance, selling churros at Magic Kingdom), but in all seriousness, that's the spirit of what I'm after.
In that regard, I've found it difficult in the last year for purpose to break through all of the noise. But there are signs that it's starting to bubble up. The coding was an example of that. I'm also signing up for something I haven't done in a long time that I'm excited about (but have to wait for it to solidify before I dare talk about it). I'm thinking about the rum doc at least. I hate to say that I need to focus on things to distract from the noise, but clearly that would help.
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