As 2023 closes out, I am beginning to experience some mild depression. There were so many things I wanted to do this year, but I completed so few. The book I swore I would finish writing is still ten chapters away from starting to edit. The car trips I wanted to take are but a dream substituted by too many trips to doctors. The art shows I intended to enter became haze in the air, with no art to show. Looking back at the months, I now realize I spent too many hours watching videos and TV shows. The soul searching has revealed that I did accomplish some things. However, they were not significant in my eyes. These few projects did cause me to expend a lot of energy and time, but I needed more satisfaction.
In years past, I would create a list of the year’s accomplishments, some big, but most small by comparison, like trips to the library to select reading matter or the many hours spent cutting, shaping, and sanding pieces of wood to make a picture, and hours spent shopping for groceries to keep my waistline growing. If I were to keep a spreadsheet of my daily activities, the number one time consumer is watching TV, followed by eating. Sleeping now consumes more hours per day than it did twenty years ago. I like to sleep nine to ten hours per day, with a regular cat nap at the computer mid-afternoon, whereas twenty years ago, I could sleep for six hours and have energy for the entire day. I just watched a TED talk video in which a British Doctor explains what it is like at the end of life. She describes how the healthcare system has taken dying away from us. A hundred years ago, dying belonged to us, and we dealt with it differently than we do now. Today, with modern healthcare and all of its technology, we expect to live beyond what our bodies are capable of. She explained that as we near the end, our bodies require more and more sleep. The warning signs are in front of my face.
Instead of making an inventory of my past year, I will spend some time making a list of goals for the coming year. Most people call these resolutions, but I prefer to call them goals. Among the goals I will set will be to become more physically active and less of a couch potato. My legs have become so weak from inactivity that I can’t get up from a stoop without holding on to something and pulling myself up. Lifting with my quads is a physical impossibility at this time. The most important thing to remember is to follow my advice and to take baby steps to progress.
Filed under: Aging, Biography, family, health care | Tagged: End of Life, goals, resolutions, Sleep | 4 Comments »
