Facing 60

In a word, I'm disappointed at where I am in life and unhappy with the state of the world. The state of the world overwhelms me.

I had thought that I would retire at 60 and that my first grandchild would be born shortly after my official retirement and that I would care for the grandbabies. That ain't happening.

I'm 64 and still hard at work. Doodoo happens.

I'm 68 and work an eight-hour day, five of 'em a week. Myself, I don't think I'd want it any other way. One of my major fears is that ill health or some other age-related infirmity might force me into retirement. What the heck would I do then?

Well, ****, I cried the night I was thirty... I think not because I was thirty, but that I was thirty and not married (that was more unusual then), and, furthermore, that H apparently didn't want to marry me.

Give it a few years, 60 will seem youngish.

Not to toss aside your real concerns, POM.

You've got a few years on me POM...I'm still shy of fifty. I'd detail the things that are bothering me, but they're primarily superficial and I know they are trivial complaints in the scheme of things. Still, I'm grappling with the inevitable changes...seeing myself...hoping for…grace (I wish it came naturally)... acceptance.

Will you retire as expected? Do you still want to?

What is happening POM?

Having just turned the Big six-oh in January, I have mixed feelings. Doing things a bit backward, I have a 12-year-old daughter who keeps me feeling young... well, younger. I still work full-time (teaching high school) and need to keep going for obvious reasons (health insurance for my wife and daughter for one).

I can legitimately argue I have a life others would figuratively kill for... or that I am a failure on many counts depending on who I compare myself to. Most of the time it's the former.

My life has been good (overall) minus the bumps we all face. Should I drop tomorrow, I would only have one regret - not being here for my daughter as she grows up.

I dealt with mortality at age 9 the first time. Two weeks of shaky crying through the night, pondering the imponderables...

33 slayed me.

I've been fine about age since then. Of course, I'm only 45. I may have another sleepless year in the offing.

POM-- I know we don't seem to like each other, so I'm prefacing by telling you this is intended to benefit you.

Don't place your happiness on what other people have to be responsible for--like grandbabies. You have seemed quite bitter lately. Try to get to the bottom of that--and search out ways to create happiness in your life.

60 isn't bad by itself (as some members have evidenced). It's only bad if you have some other problem.

I hope you can take control of your situation and find happiness. Life is too short to spend it unhappy.

I wish you well.

I should say that I went back to school to enable me to return to work. I had been a journalist before marrying and moving to New England and thought the master's degree would be just the thing to land a job in either publishing or university administration.

Wrong.

I have been working -- two and three jobs at a time to keep things together -- but have yet to earn more than $20,000 in any given year.

I don't want to retire. But, I would like to be interviewed for a job.

I can't take being poor anymore.

And, I do have some grandbabies, although they live an 8-hour drive from me.

I'm frustrated by the amount of money it takes to do anything. ABout ageism. About the fact that my current job (which I hate) will end in June with nothing on the horizon.

I'm frustrated by the state of the world -- I thought the idealism of the 60s would make the world a better place. Utterly failed, we did.

Can you see the extreme negativity in your voice? Look at everything here.

You have to take control of some of this. You CAN.

plainoldme wrote :



i know that i can't change the state of the world , but i know that i can help an old friend or a neighbour with a few little things .
at our age (mrs h included) , there are not many of our old friends left .
i'm glad that we visited friends in the hospital and the seniors' home when they were still alive .
some small things , such as taking a flower-pot to a friend in the seniors' home seems to always put a smile on their face , or just listening to an old friend on the phone for a while seems to help them - they don't usually need advice - they just want to talk and that's fine with us .

i remember a saying someone had on his office desk :
"don't praise me at my grave , i can't hear you any more !" .
so do it NOW !

give it a few more years and i'm sure you'll understand :
LIFE AT 60 AIN"T SO BAD !
try walking "on the sunny side of the street" , it doesn't cost any more than on the shadow side .
(yes , i do know these are platitudes . isn't there something , anything that will make you smile ?)
hbg

Hamburger -- You brought up visiting people and doing small things. When I was in my 20s, two different older friends invited me to have lunch with them. The first time that happened, I was barely 20 and still in college, working as a tour guide at the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village. In the winter, the college guides took small groups of people on walking tours through the snow to see a few of the individual houses. I had just come off a tour when I encountered the tin smith, an older man who made small items out of tin (candle holders and ornaments) while discussing the work of the tinsmith in 19th C America. These items were sold in the gift shop. He was a lovely person, but far, far older than I was. I just wanted to sit with the girls, so I told him that I was just leaving on a tour, rather than coming back. He died in his sleep that night.

A few years later, a survivor of the McCarthy witch hunts somehow drifted into a circle I knew. I probably met him at Wayne State University where he may have come to the student cafeteria for lunch (there were salads with either chicken or tuna for 50 cents in those days) or I may have come to know him when I worked at the bookstore. Anyway, he never recovered emotionally from the loss of his legal practice and the blacklisting during the 1950s and he was always depressed.

I share the last name as a woman he had known during the late 30s or early 40s who was an active Communist. I knew he liked me as a friend, but, he always asked whether I was related to "Anne, the radical woman" as he called her. While talking to him could be rewarding, you always had to buoy him up in order to lighten his load and allow his humor and intellection (word choice?) to surface. Anyway, while I usually spent some time with him, he, too, asked me to lunch on a day when I was truly pressed for time -- although I could have spared half an hour -- and wasn't really ready to carry him. While it was true that I had already had lunch, I could have had a cup of coffee with him, but, I let the fact that I had eaten stop me from spending time with him.

Before a week passed, his obituary and an editorial on his life and what blacklisting had done to him appeared in the Detroit Free Press. I felt terrible.

Now, while I have had to live with letting these two friends down, when I told this story to my last boyfriend, after we had broken up, he said that he didn't believe me. That was a crushing blow. Why would I make up a lie about friends dying, particularly when the events surrounding what was the last time I would have seen them made me look so shallow? Was his refusal to believe me karma?

BTW -- Hamburger, somehow, I thought you were a 30-something.

Lash -- I suppose that I could ignore you. I probably should send you an off-page, personal response. However, I hope you know one of the reasons why I don't like you. I think your response with the colored interjections is talking down to me. I think you are in no position to do so.

Now, when I mentioned that I wanted to care for my grandc hildren, you wrote an off-the-wall response about my investing my happiness in others. How you could have derived that from what I said is . . . well, there are no words to express that.

I will tell you this: when my daughter was four and my son two, we left them with a babysitter in order to attend the rehearsal dinner for my ex-husband's niece's wedding. The girl invited two of her friends over and they had oral sex with my young children. This eventually came out. My former husband refused to believe my daughter and went to his brother, an attorney (who was the father of the bride whose rehearsal dinner we attended) who was part of a rather prominent Boston firm with a colorful history, including a novel based on one of the firm's cases and a subsequent film based on the novel.

I felt that while my brother-in-law wouldn't handle the case himself because of some form of conflict of interest, I was certain he would recommend an attorney to me. Instead, he recommended that I do nothing because, "some day, some day, she will be caught in the act and then, then she will be punished." I felt that, in retirement, I would take upon myself the responsibility of caring for the grandkids to avoid anything like that for them.

It has nothing to do with some needy little search for happiness.

in that case, I wouldn't be old enough to sign up for A2K :wink:

Not sure why you thought this was an inappropriate response, plainoldme.

plainoldme wrote :





thanks !

i can understand that things haven't always been smooth sailing for you .
i sure hope your grandchildren will give you a great deal of pleasure
in your "in-between-age" !
take care - and try to enjoy the little pleasures in life !
hbg

Afraid to die
Hi all,

A year ago I lost a well paying job I had for years. I moved 2000 miles away with my girlfriend and everything I own for a chance at a real life after years of grown children sponging, taking care of grandchildren and sundry needy people who somehow wended their way into my life.

I got a low-paying job which was plenty for the place I moved to, but six months ago I was hospitalized abruptly and I found out I have a lung disease. The school actually fired me for being too sick to come to work. I would have had insurance in 10 more days. My doctor told me I could last perhaps one or two years. I'm only 54.

I know there are stages to acceptance of a death sentence and suppose I've been in denial. I absolutely can not believe the doctor who was a specialist. I will not believe him. The mind is an extremely dangerous thing. It struck me today suddenly that I am terrified to die; a rather stupid revelation, I think.

I am having a terrible time dealing with making a will and dealing with living will crap and the whole thing. When I go to bed at night I have to think that whatever I've left around may be found after they remove my dead body in the morning. This has me very freaked out.

I had to return to be taken care of by my family. I am a Hot Potato. Everyone knows I will die and nobody really wants to be the one to have to find me. I have no job, no insurance and am unemployable. Hopefully my appeals to Social Security and my own personal disability insurance will kick in before I am dead, but until then, I'm pulling money out of my ass to buy the $500.00 worth of drugs I need to stay alive each month. It's actually pretty scary to try to be alive in today's climate.

I am not saying to anyone that you should be glad you are sixty and getting older. I'm having a terrible time dealing with age too. Nothing is where it ought to be on my body and my mother stares back at me from the mirror. Eeww! The drug that is keeping me alive puts hair all over my face and makes my stomach fat and my face a full moon. It boils down to character and personality. I'm half screwed there too.

Even if I were healthy I would only be able to get the most lowly of jobs because where I live there are 250-300 applicants for any good position many of whom are younger and more qualified. The companies will almost always choose a 30 year old before a 50 year old just because of the cost of health insurance.

The best thing I could do at my age was to team up with someone compatible and live on a smaller income. I'm glad I did it, sorry I got sick and wish I had gone to work for the county right out of high school instead of bothering with college at all because they pay decent and have exellent benefits. If you don't have a passion for your work you may as well work for the benefits. I unfortunately chose to be happy and loved what I did for a living.

Thanks for being here. I'm well entertained.

Missconduct - I am so sorry to hear of your health. You are a trooper. I hope for you that the funds come to help support you. Won't your family help?