Aging not so Gracefully

I will be 57 very soon. I find that I am not aging as gracefully as I might like. I don't like the fact that I have trouble recalling people's names, specific nomenclature for tools and techniques, and generally a lot of things that used to be always easily pulled out of my memory banks that now get exceedingly slow. This worried me enough that I read several books on how aging affects the brain. I felt better after discovering that the brain compensates in other ways for this lack of speed, but it still bothers me to have a conversation constantly interrupted with pauses and a lot of "I can't think of the name right now" comments.

I have also discovered that my writing often takes on unintended comical aspects. I sometimes simply leave letters off of words as if my brain can't be bothered to complete the whole word. I regularly substitute on and in within sentences as well as this and these although these comes out "thes". My proofreading has always been terrible as I tend to read what I meant to write instead of what I actually recorded. This makes my new tendencies even more frustrating.

I have a routine I go through when I leave work to check that I have my badge to get back into work with and my cell phone in my pocket. I have twice gotten out of the car and started back into the shop to retrieve my missing cell phone WHILE I was talking to someone on the "missing" cell phone. I have even more elaborate routines while leaving home for work that involve checking and rechecking whether the stove is off or the water faucet I use to fill the dog's bowl is off. You don't even want to know what I go through when leaving on a trip. None of this used to happen when I was younger.

Quite a few years ago I figured out that I had to work out regularly to maintain any semblance of physical strength so I do that fairly routinely. Still, rigorous exercise produces levels of pain in the mornings that sometimes makes me think I should just retire permanently to the couch. Back pain, shoulder pain, ankle pain, and pain in my hands from a lifetime of manual labor and a youth of physical confrontation are constant companions. I don't enjoy these companions but I am never quite free from them either. Concentration on the task at hand and a certain sense of creative enjoyment dulls them considerably during activity, but they soon come back with a vengeance when I sit down for a while.

Some time ago, I worked with a somewhat crotchety retired guy who had come back to double dip on the system. He came in one Monday morning limping considerably. I asked him what was wrong and he whirled around pointing his finger at me accusingly, "Getting old is not for p%^^#s. You'll find that out one day." Wherever you are today Chester..... I couldn't agree more. Still.... it beats the only other alternative we have.