Well,  I reviewed my 2016 Time Capsule in a recent Video.  It is amazing to me the huge number of changes that have occurred in my life in just 4 very short years.  I changed Jobs, I moved to a new state (NC), bought a new home (of course), lost both of my Boys, got a new puppy. Moreover, the last 3 years have just totally turned my life upside down and inside out. I got Older too!

These changes have definitely left me many wonderful opportunities to explore new places and have vastly improved my plans for the future.  My life in New York was getting stagnant, with my “Favorite Places” in the Adirondacks taking up much of my travel adventures. The cost of living was keeping my savings from growing to where I needed it to be for retirement. In addition, the friends and family I had in the area were keeping me from doing the things that were best for me! Relocating to North Carolina allowed me to expand my horizons and enrich my life with the things that most feed my spirit and mental being.

I’m going to do a follow up with a Time Capsule for 2025 discussing where I am today and where I hope to be in 2025.  After the last 4 years, there are amazing possibilities.  So let me expand on that for a minute.  I reached the “Top of the Hill” in the last 4 years, and so I am now “Over the Hill” in my life and in my age.   I now have a “senior pass” to the National Parks and enjoy many nice little discounts at different retail establishments and concessions.  I have feared these things for a great many years, but now that they are here, I guess I am enjoying them.  It’s a mean dirty trick that time plays on us. From the time we are old enough to understand age, I believe around 6 or 7 years old, we want to be older.  We yearn to be “Grown Up”!  We cannot wait to be old enough to Drive, then old enough to Vote, and then old enough to drink (legally anyway). Then we hit our 20’s and we are “FREE” and immortal and if we are lucky enough to have a decent job, then life is the best it could be!!!  A man with money in his pocket even believes he sings well !!  Time is baiting us for the big fall !

Then maybe we get married and have children and in our 30’s and 40’s life gets a little tougher and we realize that to keep it going we have responsibilities and requirements to be met. Caring for a family or a relationship, recognizing aging parents. Loosing friends or family to accidents or illness. We begin to realize life is fragile.  We may even decide we need to take better care of ourselves. Loose a little weight, monitor our Blood Pressure more, stop smoking, even exercise (yuck). If we are successful with these plans and goals, again, we are still “Immortal” and we have proved that we will live forever!  Even though we had crossed that dubious “halfway” line of 50 years old, we are competing with our peers and we are winning (at least in some areas, in our minds). And life is good!  We ignore the party with the Black Balloons and the “Cemetery Cake”.  Fifty is a “Halfway Point” that leaves us much room for indulgence.

Then, we hit 60. And if not us, then people around us are feeling the tests of time.  Suddenly friends, coworkers, siblings, we are seeing doctors for things you never considered for your inner circle.  Cardiologists, vascular surgeons, multiple pills to take every day, cataract surgery, arthritis !  How did these things sneak up on us?  We were so healthy and happy.  Suddenly “living” is becoming “a job”.

So, let us try to predict the next 5 years, maybe even 10!   Will we be able to make it so far, so old, so long. Well, not “So Long, it been good to know you”, just 10 years still seems forever.  My “Lifetime Test” says I will have to pay the piper at the age of 83.  That will be 2041.  So 2025 and 2030 don’t seem like much of a challenge.  I will try to stay healthy,  and as long as I have Akela, I will be Happy.  With those two things, we will continue along this path…. Wherever it takes us!

Follow Me, Where I go, what I do, and who I know, Make it part of you to be a part of me…….
Thanks for reading this Rant, we’ll be back in a week or two !

Rick & Akela!