Man, it's been a while

So let's chat about something.

The idea of having a notebook on me at all times is a good one. I like having a place to jot down ideas that come to mind right off the top, right at the moment before they escape me, never to return...or at least never to return in quite the same way.

A middle-aged man looks at himself at 51, and looks back on his life, wondering. He's at a windy cliff overlooking a vast, wild sea teeming with whitecaps. Was it a life that brought him what he wanted? Did he accomplish what he wanted? Did he accomplish what he intended to? At least up to this point?

Yes, and no. I said a while back that if I could go back and talk to myself from the days of trying to decide about whether to pursue computers or natural medicine, I would have at least argued in favor of computers. It would have suited my demeanor, my mindset better. It certainly would have created a better foundation for financial stability and success. Besides, I would have said, simply because I was interested in natural medicine doesn't mean that I would have made for a successful doctor. Those are two vastly different things. One involves treating yourself; the other, taking interest in the health of others and treating them. Moreover, becoming a doctor, I found, required me to be an outgoing entrepreneur first...and that was a requirement I was ill-equipped to meet. It was not a good match, at the end of the day.

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When I worked at American Express Financial Advisors back in 1998, I was told at one time to go to a day-long seminar on...something or other, off-campus. It was one of the most random, boring, and incongruous things I've ever done, and certainly the most all-of-those-things day during my time at AEFA. When I returned, I saw that it had nothing whatsoever to do with my job, which was dwindling more and more each day. Years later, I suspect it was just a ruse to get me out of the office for a day so my boss could comfortably approach others and ask them about me and the lack of benefit I was imparting to the corporate strategy and development team. That day, sometime in November, I suspect, was the beginning of the end.

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I glance at a card that a friend, John, once sent me, with an offer to get together for lunch. It's emblazoned with stylized calligraphy that reads "It is never too late to be what you might have been," a quote by George Eliot. It has remained on my desk for years, a positive, gentle reminder of the joys of a future that remains rife with possibility, even as my age rises ever higher and my mental capacity beings to fade.

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Which reminds me...I do wonder how much of my mental capacity fading is because of my meds. But I suspect more of it is because of screens. It's difficult for me to completely get away from screens (witness this journal entry), but it's the scrolling, I think, that's the hard part. I see things like this list of Great Books of the Western World, and a small part of my brain begins to drool...to absorb the greatest thoughts of one major part of the world is super enticing. Has been for years. But at this point, who knows? I doubt I'll be able to finish even a fraction of what is here. And I've long since learned that simply because a book is listed here doesn't mean it's worth reading; my experience with Nietzsche was mind-warping and frightening, and I don't expect to pick up any of his writing ever again. But the good stuff, yes.