Home » Discussion Forums » Blog Post Discussion » Carpe Diem
| Carpe Diem [message #20289] |
Tue, 08 September 2009 19:11  |
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Carpe Diem
Smooshes!
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| Re: Carpe Diem [message #20297 is a reply to message #20289 ] |
Tue, 08 September 2009 19:32  |
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I’m 57. If I’m planning on acquiring any new skills I need to get at it.
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I fully expect to look up one day and realize I'm 57 and oh crap there's so much I want to do I'd better get at it!. That's a little scary. I'm already having moments of "wasn't I just 21?" and "wasn't I just in high school like last week?" GEEZE. If this trend continues, pretty soon waitpeople aren't going to card me for drinks, and the nice folks at Wendy's are going to offer me a senior discount. (10%!)
Actually, now that I think about it, I don't have much time. I'd better acquire some new skills NOW.
Smooshes!
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| Re: Carpe Diem [message #20304 is a reply to message #20301 ] |
Tue, 08 September 2009 20:33 |
 judith
Messages: 249
Registered: October 2008
Location: United States |
Senior Member |
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| Robin wrote on Tue, 08 September 2009 20:13 |
Time goes faster and faster the older you get.
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According to a professional librarian I once knew, they actually teach them this in library school. If someone asks for an article from the past two years, if the person is under 25, they look back two years; between 25 and 30, back three years; between 30 and 35, back 5 years; 35 to 45, back 10 years; etc.
I noticed as I entered my 40s that 4-day weekends away from work started to feel like a normal weekend used to feel, and that a two week vacation started to feel like a one week vacation used to feel.
Remember how long a week, a month, a year felt when we were kids? Apparently its because these periods are a relatively smaller proportion of our lifespan as we age. Now I feel like a year is nothing.
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| Re: Carpe Diem [message #20306 is a reply to message #20289 ] |
Tue, 08 September 2009 21:31 |
skating librarian
Messages: 576
Registered: October 2008
Location: Vermont |
Senior Member |
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So we seized the day and drove to Provincetown, MA to go on a whale watch as a treat for my sister in law's birthday.
And we saw a dozen endangered humpbacks: blowing, swimming on the surface, making bubble-nets and even feeding. Some were singles, others in groups as large as four. Although we've both been out a half dozen times and seen some fantastic whales, there is something so impressive about their grace as they move through the water, that one is always glad one seized the chance to see living miracles.
At 61 I am rather notorious as someone who will run with ideas which have never seen the inside of a box, and for anyone who thinks that must lead to disaster ... nope! Mainly one has lots of experiences teaching one to love life and not to let fear destroy one's dreams. If one dream turns out to be a nightmare, choose another.
And thus ends today's sermon.
"Winning a war is like winning an earthquake" Jeanette Rankin
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| Re: Carpe Diem [message #20307 is a reply to message #20301 ] |
Tue, 08 September 2009 22:08 |
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| Robin wrote on Tue, 08 September 2009 20:13 |
Well . . . actually . . . yes.  Time goes faster and faster the older you get. Again, I don't think this is (necessarily) morbid--I think this is--uh--just getting plugged in to LIFE better. (Don't hold your breath about not getting carded, though. They were still carding me till I moved to England at 39. )
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I don't think it's morbid, either.
You're probably right about the carding thing. When I was a server, the rule was that we carded anyone who looked under 30. I'm horrible at telling ages (I get way too young, young, my mom, and older than my mom), so lots of people got carded. I suspect there are lots of people with the same inability to tell ages, and I've been told I look pretty much the same as I did when I was 20 (about the time I lost the baby fat around my cheeks, heh), so...
Smooshes!
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| Re: Carpe Diem [message #20310 is a reply to message #20289 ] |
Wed, 09 September 2009 01:29 |
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Diane in MN
Messages: 2756
Registered: October 2008
Location: Twin Cities, MN, USA |
Senior Member |
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The balance is always tricky—would I be less behind on PEGASUS if I’d gone to fewer bell practises? Is adding voice lessons to the steaming salmagundi definitively one thing too many? But . . . I came back from ringing call changes for bishops last night feeling a lot brighter than when I left. I had a blast at my voice lesson today§§. And after it I went by Third House to water anything that needed watering, and it was such a gorgeous afternoon and things don’t need to be watered nearly as often if you just get them out of their pots and into the ground and furthermore I have thirty roses coming and I need the decks clear, and. . . .
As someone who found out long ago that I don't have the Single Eye, I find this completely understandable and completely sane. One can recognize and honor the central thing in one's life without consigning everything else to the outer darkness. Hurrah for a beautiful afternoon and a blooming garden and cavorting hellhounds, and the anticipation of 30 (count 'em) roses. For me, at least, that would translate into a more productive return to work than hours glued to a chair and staring out the window.
Even if what it proves is that I’m a dingaling dilettante ditz.
Or multi-talented person involved in a variety of creative activities?
Until they develop better browsing techniques, on line bookstores are still a lot less fun . . . I mean hazardous.
I would agree--scanning the shelves at a 3D bookstore offers the chance of serendipitous finds. Although this doesn't make online bookstores any less hazardous to the bank balance; it's awfully easy to run up a tab online.
"The point of books is to have way too many but to always feel you never have enough . . . " Louise Erdrich
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| Re: Carpe Diem [message #20312 is a reply to message #20310 ] |
Wed, 09 September 2009 02:09 |
zerlina
Messages: 99
Registered: May 2009
Location: Invercargill, New Zealand |
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| Diane in MN wrote on Wed, 09 September 2009 |
One can recognize and honor the central thing in one's life without consigning everything else to the outer darkness.
I would agree--scanning the shelves at a 3D bookstore offers the chance of serendipitous finds. Although this doesn't make online bookstores any less hazardous to the bank balance; it's awfully easy to run up a tab online.
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Yes. And yes.
[Updated on: Wed, 09 September 2009 02:10]
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| Re: Carpe Diem [message #20314 is a reply to message #20289 ] |
Wed, 09 September 2009 02:28 |
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Author Lois Bujold calls the period after a book is done, and before the idea for the next rises out of her backbrain (her metaphor for your story council) her period of "cultural filter-feeding." Reads a lot, fiction and non, watches anime, goes on long walks. Sound familiar? Although, as she describes it, her life seems to oscillate more between periods of doing-nothing-much-but-writing, and relaxing into the filter-feeding.
I do have to mention a book she reported on, that she said was at about the right level for post-root-canal reading. The Very Virile Viking, which was "Picked out ... for the title, because, really."
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| Re: Carpe Diem [message #20315 is a reply to message #20289 ] |
Wed, 09 September 2009 07:01 |
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Mrs Redboots
Messages: 949
Registered: October 2008
Location: London, UK |
Senior Member |
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I must admit that getting older is horrible! I don't mind having the wisdom I have now, I love my preaching and my skating and my reading and my knitting and such writing as I do that isn't sermons.... but oh, how I wish I still had the body I had when I was 21 and didn't do a step of exercise and could eat what I liked. Whoever is this fat, bent, greying old woman I see in the mirror, or, worse still, dancing with my husband in skating photos?
I also wish I had more energy now. I've never had all that much, but seem to have less and less as time goes by!
Mrs Redboots
I love my computer because my friends live in it!
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| Re: Carpe Diem [message #20316 is a reply to message #20305 ] |
Wed, 09 September 2009 09:45 |
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| judith wrote on Wed, 09 September 2009 02:38 |
And for some odd reason, I can never browse in a bookstore (live, rather than virtual) for more than five or ten minutes without desperately needing to use the bathroom.
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This isn't odd, this is normal. The smell of books relaxes some people. When I was a University student I always knew that after 10 min in the library I'd run to the bathroom! Later I compared notes and found out that a lot of people have the same experience.
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I'll have share a memory about the speed of time:
I remember when a ride to town in the car took _Forever_. When I asked my mom how she could stand all that time driving she took down a yard stick and told me, "this is the measure of your years. Right now you're at 5 that's about 5 inches. When you've only experienced 5 inches of life, it goes by very slowly, but the more inches you live the quicker life will go by." As always mom's right.
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| Re: Carpe Diem [message #20319 is a reply to message #20289 ] |
Wed, 09 September 2009 10:10 |
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Black Bear
Messages: 3239
Registered: September 2008
Location: Indianapolis, IN USA |
Senior Member
[Moderator] |
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Beautiful post, Robin.
I have to say that, as 40 looms in my near vision, that I think one of the things that has kept me (arguably) sane thus far is that I haven't done Just One Thing with my life. My terrible fear when I was 25 was that I would wake up at 65 and find that I'd been doing the same damn thing in the same damn way every day for the intervening years. I'm not just talking about my career--though that's taken an awful lot of convoluted twists since 25, and no doubt more are in store--but everything about my life, you know? So I made a resolution to try to continually shake routine, whether it was seeking new routes to work in the morning, or suddenly deciding to go back to school for an MA in a subject that was fascinating if not marketable...
While I don't DO nearly as much as you (Robin) in a scheduling sense--my ideal life would be day after day with nothing in particular planned ahead--I figure that the day I stop seeking out the new experience is going to be the day I wrap it up. And yeah, the older you get, the more vital this seems.
"The time is always right to do what's right."--MLK Jr.
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| Re: Carpe Diem [message #20320 is a reply to message #20319 ] |
Wed, 09 September 2009 10:38 |
Jeanne Marie
Messages: 320
Registered: October 2008
Location: Kansas City |
Senior Member |
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| Black Bear wrote on Wed, 09 September 2009 09:10 |
Beautiful post, Robin.
I have to say that, as 40 looms in my near vision, that I think one of the things that has kept me (arguably) sane thus far is that I haven't done Just One Thing with my life. My terrible fear when I was 25 was that I would wake up at 65 and find that I'd been doing the same damn thing in the same damn way every day for the intervening years. I'm not just talking about my career--though that's taken an awful lot of convoluted twists since 25, and no doubt more are in store--but everything about my life, you know? So I made a resolution to try to continually shake routine, whether it was seeking new routes to work in the morning, or suddenly deciding to go back to school for an MA in a subject that was fascinating if not marketable...
While I don't DO nearly as much as you (Robin) in a scheduling sense--my ideal life would be day after day with nothing in particular planned ahead--I figure that the day I stop seeking out the new experience is going to be the day I wrap it up. And yeah, the older you get, the more vital this seems.
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I agree. I remember conversations with other music students, in which they would declare proudly that their ONLY skill was music, that they couldn't do anything else. My thought was "huh...really?" Why would you WANT to have that kind of tunnel vision? Life is more frantic, yes, but much more interesting and FUN when you have your hands in lots of different, equally delicious, pies.
Smiles,
JM
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| Re: Carpe Diem [message #20321 is a reply to message #20289 ] |
Wed, 09 September 2009 10:45 |
Jeanne Marie
Messages: 320
Registered: October 2008
Location: Kansas City |
Senior Member |
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§§ ... he’s given me another song to play with: Caro mio ben by Giordani.
Hee hee - great piece! You'll have fun with this!
He says it will help my Italian^, and that the phrases are nice and short, so I can worry less about running out of breath, which is still an issue with Sebben and Panis, although I have begun to realise this has as much to do with nerves as with diaphragmatic misbehaviour.
Yes. Everyone - and I do mean EVERYONE - deals with loss of breath when nervous. It happens. You do learn to compensate, mostly, but it still happens!
But he hears stuff that I don’t hear till he points it out and then it’s very often like . . . oh. Duuh. But I wouldn’t have noticed without a professional-singer-with-a-gorgeous-voice pointing it out.
This past summer I took a voice lesson with a pro for the first time in years, and one of the first things he told me was to drop my jaw - which is the first thing I usually tell all of MY voice students!! We both laughed out loud about this fact, that we ALL, no exceptions, still need someone to point out the obvious from time to time!
Smiles,
JM
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| Re: Carpe Diem [message #20324 is a reply to message #20289 ] |
Wed, 09 September 2009 12:45 |
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Julia
Messages: 532
Registered: October 2008
Location: Library School |
Senior Member |
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Agreement.
I'm going to be 20 in just under two weeks [oy] and I can already recognise how much faster time goes by...
I've been so busy in the past few weeks that I haven't really thought about it, but then last night I found my eighth grade "video yearbook" that somehow ended up with the CDs that I grabbed when packing... and it was so bizarre to watch all these people that I have known since kindergarten, and to see their seventh and eighth grade selves captured forever on film -- depictions of people from only five and six years ago, but what feels like both forever and yesterday all at once.
Seeing myself then, too. Weird. [There's a clip of me hobbling around on crutches, after I fractured my foot [or was it my ankle?] in a bout of Capture the Flag in gym class]
Any time I see "carpe diem" it makes me think of a song I sang once in chorus class.
Anyway. But you all do so much [and, in my humble opinion, are so cool and interesting and kind...] , even as you might look back at the time when you were my age, and feel an urge to wax nostalgic, that I am inspired and have hope that I too can do any number of intriguing and fun and worthy things and can (and will) keep learning for an awfully long time.
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| Re: Carpe Diem [message #20331 is a reply to message #20289 ] |
Wed, 09 September 2009 18:15 |
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Bratsche
Messages: 269
Registered: October 2008
Location: Washington State, USA |
Senior Member |
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And then, of course, I come home and forget. I fear that I am already developing a tradition of going in each week and saying I forget what you told me last time about x/y/z/all of the above.
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Don't worry about that, Robin. I tell all my students, "If you get home and thing x seemed really clear at your lesson but is impossible to remember once you're on your own, just ask me to repeat it again next week." There are some things that I know in advance I will probably need to explain several weeks in a row. However, eventually, it'll click and stay clicked (or at least mostly!).
One of my viola professors required that I bring in a tape each week to tape my lesson (he had the tape recorder in his office). You could try such a thing if you're really bothered by not remembering. HOWEVER, there is one huge thing I want to add to that....if you do record yourself, discount AT LEAST half of what you dislike when you listen to it. Unless you have stellar sound recording equipment, a fair bit of what your critical ear will flinch at is based on the quality of the recording, not the quality of the voice!
Wendy
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| Re: Carpe Diem [message #20337 is a reply to message #20304 ] |
Wed, 09 September 2009 19:45 |
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Robin
Messages: 6024
Registered: September 2008
Location: England |
Senior Member
[Hellgoddess] |
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According to a professional librarian I once knew, they actually teach them this in library school. If someone asks for an article from the past two years, if the person is under 25, they look back two years; between 25 and 30, back three years; between 30 and 35, back 5 years; 35 to 45, back 10 years; etc.
*********** I LOVE this. That not only the change of the sense of time as we age is general but that the inability to RECOGNISE the change of the feel of the passage of time is normal. :)
Remember how long a week, a month, a year felt when we were kids? Apparently its because these periods are a relatively smaller proportion of our lifespan as we age. Now I feel like a year is nothing.
*********** Yes, this one I know about, and it makes sense to me. But also because--because of all the stuff we increasingly do!--our lives are richer, and take more time to, you know, get around to all the bits of. :)
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| Re: Carpe Diem [message #20343 is a reply to message #20340 ] |
Wed, 09 September 2009 19:59 |
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| Robin wrote on Wed, 09 September 2009 19:53 |
All of that. Also, you may remember my having said on the blog a few times that I had my adolescence in my 30s, having missed it the first time round. I did look younger than my age, but I got carded sometimes because people were offended that someone my age was . . . well, wearing studs, leather and All Stars, and were trying to shame me. It didn't work. :)
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I do remember, and I'm glad their shaming didn't work! Shame on THEM for trying to make you feel bad!
There's a woman who works at a gas station/general store in the mountains. Jeff and I have to go through there to get to Charlottesville, so we usually stop and get something to drink. She's probably a little younger than my mom. And she wears black leather and eyeliner, spikes her (black) hair, and is always very chirpy when she sees us. I think she's awesome. :D
Smooshes!
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| Re: Carpe Diem [message #20359 is a reply to message #20353 ] |
Wed, 09 September 2009 21:59 |
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This is the whole point of Warning, the poem that inspired the Red Hat Society. I do like it.
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