One thing about blogging (even doing so sporadically) over the last 19 years is the inevitably of capturing the passage of time.
That was part of my reason for beginning this blog back in 2004. To capture the years of my early parenting and to help describe the younger years of my children. (In high school I was a scrapbooker and I began capturing bits of pieces of my life and the things that I loved at the time. This blog was something of a digital extension of that impulse.)
That was not the sole inspiration for my blogging in the beginning, though. I also wanted to give myself a creative outlet for writing. But, unavoidably, the family element of the content grew and grew as that part of my life became so central to what I was doing every day. If you scan through the early years, and if you ignore the very obvious focus on television (still true!), most of my posts are family related. Check the tags and categories if you don't want to submit yourself to reading all of that . . . stuff from back then.
Andbutso . . . the passage of time. It's inevitable. Whether I accidentally chronicle it when writing or not. Time doesn't care what I do. And what I do has no significant impact on time. So . . . . what's up this week?
What's up is that I realized (obvious though it is) that as I age, I am mentally shifting my observance of events to a perspective that sees more things as ending rather than beginning.
What do I mean?
Well, when you have been doing the same thing consistently for a long time--as I have--it becomes unavoidable, I suppose.
I've had essentially the same job, at the same place, with some (but not most) of the same people for about half of my life. And my non-work life is comfortably routine as well. My family is stable. And despite the fact that they keep getting older and they don't all live at home anymore, the kids and Lynda are all still here. And almost all of my extended family remains in touch, since I've moved away from childhood and college. So, this back half of my life (so far) has been . . . predictable and stable.
You should be so lucky!
It is, however, as I say, inevitable that as time goes on, the number of unique experiences decreases and the number of repeat experiences increases. And that being the case . . . I sometimes find myself ticking off (in a vague way) the times that I have already done something and a slow awareness that those somethings have a finite number. Am I on the downward slope of those things? I am not given to know the day or the hour . . . so I cannot with certainly answer that thought. But the vague mental math checks out.
What's to be done or further said about this? Probably nothing and nobody asked me to say it anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter. But I felt it, so I sat down to express it.
In a glass-half-full sort of attitude, I can take this awareness and push myself into new things. Sure, the kids are growing and spreading out. But that opens up new space in my life to fill. Maybe I should accept this reality and fill that space with a new thing that gives me a new set of First Times to experience. What that might be . . . ? . . . is something to contemplate.
But . . . spending my Saturday watching football certainly isn't the best way to answer that question.
No comments:
Post a Comment