I turn 50 in exactly 19 months. I know, all of it is arbitrary, that "age is just a number," but I cannot tell you how much time I spend thinking about it. Like, it consumes huge chunks of my inner monologue, often for days at a time. I am not talking about the low-key stuff like being AARP-eligible, but the bigger concepts of aging and death. How you can be healthy one day and dead the next (see, Luke Perry), or seemingly healthy only to find out you have some terminal disease.
The alternatives do not seem great either. Aging imposes the small indignities, incontinence, leaky bladders, etc. while taking bigger bites too - bones that become more fragile, muscles that cannot bear the weight they once did, arterial walls that narrow. For someone who prides himself on being fit and energetic, the idea of having those things taken from me slowly is its own form of cruelty.
I am doing the best I can to stave off those effects. I want a long retirement filled with the hobbies I enjoy - exercise (even at a lower intensity), photography (I envision days spent photographing Arizona mesas, canyons, and cacti), and reading (even if I have to wear glasses), and time enough to myself for whatever else catches my eye. It is most of the reason I stick with my job. It is, in its way, the ultimate form of delayed gratification. Earning and saving all this money so that one day, maybe as I close in on 60, I can call it a career and go do what I want. That is, unless I drop dead before then.
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