“The first thing I do in the morning is read the obituaries.  If my name isn’t listed, I start my day”  

The quote above, in various forms, has been attributed to about a million different people (or maybe less, sometimes old people exaggerate).  These were most always people of a certain age.   I think we get to a place where we know we have fewer years ahead than behind and we begin to recognize our own mortality.

And that can be freaking depressing.

But what is a certain age?  The older I get, the older I think “young” is.    When I was thirty, sixty seemed forever away and very old.   Now that I’m sixty, I think I’m still young and ninety might be old.  But I think that in the eyes of others I’m probably a certain age.

Lately, people I consider young, people in their sixties, seem to be dropping like flies in a pesticide factory.   David Bowie and Alan Rickman who died last week were sixty-nine and this week Glenn Frey of the Eagles died at age sixty-seven.

“Always Older Than I Am” Dave gets nervous each time someone near our age dies.  We usually remark that retirement and fun time can’t come soon enough.    I think we’re both afraid we’ll drop dead as we lock the office door for the last time.

But because we did not win that damn power ball jackpot we will keep working until we don’t. If things go as planned, that will be in one year, eleven months and twelve days. Things, though, often don’t go as planned so even though the end of 2017 is the target,   I’m trying not to focus on that day ( notice I’m not doing such a good job considering I know exactly how many days it is until that day).   I keep reminding myself that that if I focus on that day, I might miss THIS day.

Being a certain age brings with it great clarity in hindsight.  I realized that we’ve spent so much time focusing on the “next” that we’ve missed a lot of today’s.  Now that we’re a certain age we don’t have all that many today’s left.   It would suck to wake up dead tomorrow having missed today…

So I’m going to try really hard to be in the moment and make the most of each today.

And hope that locking that office door ( in one year, eleven months and twelve days) for the last time doesn’t kill me.

And just to leave you with a laugh: