Growing Old.
How can I have a great old age? What is a great old age? Things we didn’t know about old age that we need to know?
This Blog has come about due to a number of issues to do with growing old.
- A sudden jettisoning into early retirement/ending of my main career
This leads me to examine the final third of my life, my judgments and preconceptions. Do I really have to go and volunteer at a charity shop to get out and about and have friends/outside contacts? I love charity shops and used to think about volunteering. I love looking through peoples stuff, but to be retired and do it seems to have other connotations for me. This needs examining, as well as what I do want to do with my life. What is a productive meaningful life? In a goal orientated work environment, things can look a bit bleak rather than just different.
- A change in finances
Now I have time I don’t have the money! Like many I didn’t really think about pensions. I am lucky as I do have an occupational one that I can get so I have some income though I dint work to optimise it and it has actuarial reductions from taking it early, so it doesn’t cover the household expenses and I am the main breadwinner.
- Caring for My mother
27years older than me. I am the main carer in the family. I already am quite like her. I have picked up turns of phrases from being more familiar with her and hate myself for it. She isn’t happy – I have asked her to discuss this on the blog. It isn’t an easy relationship at the best of times. And yet caring is a deeply intimate personal gift, both ways. As society debates the cost of end of life care – in today’s news even we all ask ( as tax payers and people with parents How much should families’ do? How much can I do? How do caring demands fit with work and other responsibilities? And in turn how much will my family need to do? I am not the first to ask any of this, but it needs constant discussion state versus private responsibility. I monitor it as much as I can on the net and in the press and want to feedback to help formulate ideas.
- Challenges for the NHS/How to look after my own health.
The NHS is changing – a polite way of describing it perhaps, but with financial pressures, and the increased “baby boomers” getting old there are big challenges ahead. I have grave concerns about how it will be able to look after me as I age. Regardless, I want to stay as healthy as possible – keep away from doctors, nurses, medicines and unnecessary checks ups and disease screening. If I do need their help I want to be able to be an informed patient to decide about my choice of care, but also be a gracious even “good” patient. Can we be all these things? How can I have doctors/carers see me as anything but a doddery old lady and that they know best? Do they know best?
I ponder these and many more questions frequently, research in libraries, online, with doctors etc. To monitor my thoughts and developments I want to record my findings and decisions along the way. Writing for someone and having to be clear is helpful to me. I so I thought I would start blogging.
Happy days can be ahead. How we deal with uncertainty and thoughts of infirmity must contribute to how we cope. Or am I just being naïve?
I commit to post weekly. I welcome feedback and questions that advance us in our quest for knowledge and insight.
Purple jane
amazinggrowingold 