When we are young, we see before us unlimited potential. Entering university or the job market, we can choose and practice to be anything we want, and are capable of. I never wanted to define myself as some kind of work I did, and I never really have.
I have done about every kind of work I wanted to. When I was young, single, and hale, I loved the forest and sea, so worked there. I fished commercially on and off until a decade or so ago. I lumbered in the timber mines. But I was not entranced with the results of the work. Whole massive schools of fish transferred from the ocean to the hold, and beautiful God-tended gardens of woods become ragged stump-ridden sores. Little ponds peeking up at the blue sky through the trees became nasty, stinking pits of mud and debris.
I have worked with businesses developing marketing strategies, and done the marketing. I've been in sales, built computer systems and networks, and sentenced myself briefly to government work a time or two. Collections wasn't my thing. I've tended herds and crops, even tropical fish. Just prior to 9/11 I was a professional biologist for a state agency, until that disaster sucked all the funding out of not just my study, but almost all of them.
Since the turn of the century, I have been a finish carpenter, and of all the work I've done, it best satisfies me, as I leave a physical legacy of good work in my wake that benefits people and provides them a better quality of life that I can clearly observe. I know that legacy of benefit to my customers will outlast me. I like that.
Now, I have worked as labor on construction sites from time to time throughout my life. When I was young I would pack bundles of roofing shingles weighing 90 lbs. each up ladders all day long, three at a time. The big guys could do it, so I did too.
I worked concrete jobs, tunneled under buildings to insert foundations they weren't built on from the outset, and similar hard work, damaging my back pretty significantly in the process. Still, I like finish carpentry, and the boards tend to be a lot smaller, and easier on my back, so I keep doing it.
I work in a quite rural village, so my varied experience is useful, since I can do most anything that needs to be done to a residence. Electrical, plumbing, framing, sheetrock, doors and windows, tile and masonry - if you need it done, I've done it before and can do it. Yesterday, a local single mother needed a small area roofed with shingles, so supplied me with a pound of nails and a bundle of shingles.
Now, some years ago, after I realized I'd damaged my spine manhandling loads larger than I should have, I reduced the number of bundles of shingles I'd pack up a ladder at a time from three to two, and after I'd aged into a bit more wisdom, down to just one.
90 lbs. was light enough that I didn't have any fears about injuring my back further. Well, yesterday I had pretty significant difficulty wrestling that bundle onto my shoulder, and after my knees almost buckled the first few rungs up the ladder, took my time and made sure I was steady before each step.
This is, I think, the legacy of the heart attack I had a couple weeks ago. Maybe my legs aren't getting enough blood from the damaged pump that feeds them. Dunno.
Still, it has given me pause, and caused me to question my every consideration regarding the rest of my life. I have always been certain that I could undertake any necessary effort to make a bad situation tolerable, if work was all that was needed. I could buy a trailer for $100 that no one wanted to do the necessary work to, do that work using leftover materials from other jobs, and sell it for a few grand.
I've dreamed of buying a few acres suitable for a truck garden, and even cultivated some farmers hereabouts with odd tracts they couldn't use as pasture, or for corn or alfalfa, because it was across a creek, or a road, or isolated from their main operation.
I have lived innawoods, and know I can run naked into the woods when SHTF and be warm and cozy in an hour, with nothing but my hands to work with.
I dunno if I can do those things anymore. I am having to face the fact that I am past my prime. I'm not going to get stronger, smarter, or better looking. I'm going to get less and less all those things. It's all downhill from here, and that's a fact. Suddenly my dreams shrank. My ambitions shriveled. My hopes are dashed on the rocks of the reality of old age.
Will I be able to live independently for the foreseeable future? Should I replace my steps with ramps, for the day when I need a walker or chair, and can't do that work?
I'm not much bothered by fear generally, I've often written that I consider it my greatest ally in the battle to be safe. But this fear of incontinence, of being feeble, incapable. This is different.
I will deal with it as necessary, until I can't deal with life anymore, and that's what happens to all of us, if we live long enough.
But I want to warn you: reach for your dreams early. If you are young, you may find it difficult to imagine being as old and wrinkly as the nearly deads you see. You may not want to at all. Don't blame you, actually. That may not be necessary, as long as you heed this alarm.
Dream early, hope high, and be ambitious young, because those things are for the young.
The riches of an old man are the glorious memories of a misspent youth.
IMG src - KrimJacobPics.wordpress.com
When you look like this pic, hopes, dreams, and ambition are behind you. When I look in the mirror, this is what I see today, to my enormous surprise.
