I thought for a while about what to call this blog … until Age Spots popped into my head, and seemed the perfect holistic expression of what I’ll be talking about on this site. If you’re of a certain age, I don’t need to explain. If you’re not, you might find the blog useful or amusing in an “old people say the funniest things” kind of way.
Getting back to what this is all about. I’ve reached that point in my life where the balance of prospective to retrospective has pretty clearly shifted to the latter. So have a lot of my friends and business colleagues. We talk about all the stuff we’ve always talked about, but especially about what it means to find ourselves here.
We still listen to rock music, but our idols are getting scratchy of voice, crabby, and too frequently “moving on” – for good. Many of us still work, at least part time, but careers seem less a central focus and certainly don’t involve the same amount of angst or carry the same ambitions they once did. We strive to remain vital and relevant, but face the reality that we rejected as the baby boomer generation that yes, Virginia, moving body parts do start to get just a bit creaky.
Most of all, we seem to struggle with the hurdle of remaining relevant in a youth-centered world that we made that way. I once lived in the university town that is now my daughter’s home, and loved it for the fact that everyone in town seemed to be under 30. While the place has grown threefold or more over the years, that essential characteristic remains. Except that when I visit now, the place can make me feel like an alien. We visited a very hip cocktail lounge last time I was there, and the bartender rolled his eyes and couldn’t accommodate my “exotic” drink order – a bloody mary. Seriously.
So this blog is going to be about the day-to-day experience of the world through older eyes. I will write my thoughts, usually in response to something in the news, or an article that caught my attention, or something intriguing from the fields of art, science or literature. The perspective will be from this later phase of life, and the objective will be to enhance the sense of purpose that is fundamental to appreciating who we are at any stage.
I invite and encourage your thoughts, and will facilitate the conversation by maintaining the dialogue in subsequent posts. In the immortal words of that great sage Timothy Leary, thanks for tuning in.
~Scott@agespots
Age Spots 