Tag: #atozchallenge

Posted in #atozchallenge, Challenges

D is for Depression – #AtoZChallenge – April 4, 2024

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

#AtoZChallenge

Depression is often a condition people who are aging suffer. It may occur after retirement because people find themselves at loose ends and can’t find a way to structure their life without work. It may also occur because older people lose family and friends at this time in their life. Bouts of depression are normal for the aging, but clinical depression is not. Older people often feel very satisfied with their lives despite the changes going on around them. I find that the twists and turns of life are easier to accept at this older age than when I was younger.

Depression is very treatable by your physician. There are things you can do yourself to combat depression. One of the best activities is to try to live in the moment. Don’t engage in too much nostalgia or in much worry about the future. Find things you enjoy at the present moment. A good meal, the birds singing, the company of a friend, a good book are just a few.

If you notice symptoms like the following in an older friend or relative, reach out to them and offer to help: sadness, anxiety, overeating, oversleeping, irritability, loss of interest in favorite activities, difficulty sleeping, or talking or moving more slowly than usual.

There is mild depression that starts and ends quickly. Then, there are other kinds of depression that may need the attention of a doctor along with medicine or therapy. It’s important to see a doctor if the more serious forms of depression are present.

Here is a good resource if you need to find ways to stay socially active. Often, staying physically active may help any depression you may feel. You may already be shaking your head no, but just consider some of the activities you will find here.

Posted in #atozchallenge, Challenges

C is for Cognitive Decline – #AtoZChallenge 2024

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

Theme: Aging and Associated Issues

#AtoZChallenge

We tend to associate aging with cognitive decline. Cognitive decline is just a fancy term for dementia or Alzheimer’s Disease. It can also refer to Mild Cognitive Decline which is not considered a form of dementia.

Age-related cognitive decline includes difficulty in finding the right word, slowness of thought, inability to multitask, problems with sustaining attention, and problems with retaining information. In this modern era, if a person exhibits the mildest of these symptoms, their family and doctors automatically jump to the conclusion that they have dementia. If you are worried about a loved one having some form of dementia, these are the symptoms they might be experiencing.

In my grandparent’s era, slowing down a bit mentality was just considered part of the natural process of aging. It was considered to be normal. Nothing to get excited about. Now, everyone wants a diagnosis, so they get slapped with a diagnosis of dementia when mild cognitive decline is, indeed, not dementia at all.

Here are some statistics to think about. Most people who are diagnosed with a form of dementia live in low to middle income countries. There are 55 million people worldwide who have been diagnosed with dementia with five million of those living in the United States. The country where the most dementia is present is Finland. The United Kingdom comes in second. Among developed countries, Japan comes in last. Dementia is on the rise particularly among disadvantaged countries and populations. The harder one has to live, the better the chance of dementia, it seems. People with chronic illnesses also tend to have more dementia.


Mild cognitive decline (MCI) is what most people experience as they age. Sometimes, MCI progresses into full-blown dementia, but often it does not. The symptoms of mild cognitive decline are brief problems with memory, judgment, and language. For example, you may forget where you park, forget your car keys. In the middle of a conversation, you may lose your train of thought or you may not be able to fully follow the conversation. You may get temporarily lost in a place you know well. Your judgment may not be as good as it has been in the past. These symptoms of MCI are nothing to panic about because they happen to almost all people who are aging, but you should report them to your doctor if they get to be particularly bad.

Posted in #atozchallenge, Challenges

B is for Boredom – #AtoZChallenge – April 2, 2024

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

AtoZChallenge

Boredom: Is boredom a problem in retirement?

Those of you not yet retired may think that I’m crazy for mentioning boredom in retirement. You may look forward to sleeping late, doing what you want, and perhaps traveling. Those of you who are already retired are right here with me on the boredom issue. You’ve found out that there is more to retirement than sleeping late and being a free spirit.

When is boredom a problem in retirement? Often, in America, it is a result of spending most of your working life putting in long hours under a great deal of stress. It’s important to develop hobbies and leisure activities that you enjoy as you will rely on those pursuits when you’re no longer working. Unfortunately, twelve and sixteen hour days leave us tired and stressed and many of us don’t have the time or energy for much leisure or any hobbies. Once the novelty of retirement wears off, we have all those hours in the day to fill.

So what is a retired person to do? At 65 or 70 years old, we may not have the curiosity we once did and we probably don’t have the attention span we did when younger. If you don’t allow yourself to be curious about things you aren’t familiar with, it’s going to be a long retirement. That leads to attention span. You can lengthen your attention span through curiosity.

But now, let’s be realistic. If you have worked all your life, you may feel out of sorts and useless, at least when you first retire. You may be lonely for your co-workers and friends who were related to your job. Your social activities may plunge. You may literally not know what to do with yourself. These things are why you should make a plan before you retire. A plan will help you avoid boredom.

It seems that travel is at the top of everyone’s wish list when they retire. Stay tuned! Travel and associated topics are coming right up and you may be surprised!

Posted in #atozchallenge, Challenges

Aging – #AtoZChallenge – April 1, 2024

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

A to Z Challenge 2024

Theme: Aging: Slices of Life Past and Present; Aging Issues and Financial Concerns

Aging and Aerosmith

Welcome to The Write Scribe, my blog, where I will write about issues related to aging, along with slices of life past and present, during the 2024 A to Z Challenge! I look forward to reading your blog posts and enjoying your theme during this Challenge. You can find my A to Z 2024 Challenge posts under the Challenges category at the top of the front page. I invite you to read the posts as you wish and I look forward to your comments.

Since my theme starts with an “A,” I thought starting off with some general comments about aging, and more.

There is only one alternative to aging and we know what that is. Since I’m not done in this world yet, I’ve had to accept this fundamental truth and move on with this aging business. I’ll have to tell you that I’m doing it kicking and screaming and not very graciously.

Younger people ask if, as you get older, you feel any different? I guess my answer is that it depends. If you can stay well, you might answer this question in one way, but if not, your answer might be different. Anyone at any age can become ill. However, it gets more likely as you move into your 60s and 70s. Speaking for myself, I don’t feel much different than I did at 35 except, perhaps, a little (or a lot) wiser. If only the young could have the wisdom of the old! I’ve wished that for my younger self many times.

As you age, you feel like you become invisible in the American society. Other cultures take better care of their elderly. In America, it’s all about youth and the concerns of the young. The elderly, at least in the modern era, are pushed aside as irrelevant and just a bother by many. Some of that changed during the pandemic. Employers discovered that they could depend on older workers and since the pandemic, that opinion has remained, at least to some extent.

Most people who are aging want to stay in their own homes and continue to pursue their own interests without becoming a burden to their children. To me, it’s a shame that parents have to feel like a burden although if aging parents can stay in their own homes, that is often best.

There are a lot of people who are aging who feel lonely. By the time you reach your mid-60s and early 70s, you have lost much of your family and at least some of your friends. You may be widowed. You may not be interested in socializing as much as in the past because your interests have changed. Add that to the likelihood that your friends interests have also changed and there is loneliness.

Some of my interests have changed, but basically my core interests have remained the same. For example, I still love the same music and don’t really enjoy the music of recent generations. Aerosmith, a famous rock and roll band that began in the 1970s, is still going strong, and is still one of my favorite bands, now as well as when I was younger. Steven Tyler, the lead singer, is a talented musician who has lived a long and colorful life. If you’ve never heard Aerosmith and Steven Tyler, listen to his song “Dream On” and see what you think. It’s pretty indicative of the baby boomer generation and how we grew up. Conservative parents, more liberal friends, and lots and lots of what seemed then like innocent fun. For the most part, it was!

Posted in Fiction

#AtoZChallenge – Jumpy

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The first day of the first class that all ten of them had together found them jumpy. They didn’t know each other yet. They had just been assigned a desk in the bullpen. It was a graduate class in management. The Professor walked in and in a booming voice said, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

She never forgot that quote and it came to signify their entire academic experience. They looked at each other and knew that the roller coaster of their graduate experience had begun. They all knew, from the outset, that getting a doctoral degree was difficult. Beyond difficult. It was a lifetime commitment. Some of them had families. Some didn’t have children yet, but were married. Some single. All determined to join the elusive Club. The Professorship.

They didn’t know yet that, by the end of their two years of classwork, and endless years of writing their dissertations, that the commitment to join the Club would take a heavy toll on their lives, families, and relationships. Only a few more than half of them would even succeed. For those that did, it would make their lives. It would define their lives. The Professorship would become more important to them and they would become more important to each other than anything else in their lives.

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Posted in Fiction

#AtoZChallenge – Idealistic

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They met when they were graduate students who happened to share the same field and the bullpen. That was the office where the university dumped the graduate teaching and research assistants. They studied there, prepared for classes there, got to know each other there. There were ten of them.

They were all drawn to each other. They had similar intellects, similar interests. As they grew to know each other, they found they’d even had similar lives, though their ages differed by as much as ten years. One characteristic they all shared was that they were idealistic, to an extreme. About life, about love. That would all change during the twenty, thirty, and in some cases, forty years they knew each other.

They mixed and matched in all sorts of smaller groups and pairs over the two years in that bullpen, developing strong friendships and relationships. They laughed that getting their degrees was like fighting a war together.

What they didn’t know then was that those were the Glory Days.

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Posted in Fiction

#AtoZChallenge – Happy

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As she grew up, she felt lucky to be part of a big extended family. She didn’t have any siblings, but she did have lots of first cousins. Their mothers and fathers were close, so the children saw each other often. There was almost 40 years between the oldest cousin and the youngest. It never occurred to her that they would not always be close. To her, the cousins were her siblings. She counted on them to be her family.

Until they weren’t. They all got older, married, and life got in the way. She was as guilty of that as any of them. Distance developed between them. There were still family reunions, visits, closeness, but as time passed, it became different and less frequent. She still counted on them.

Riffs in the family didn’t happen until a little more than ten years ago. She still doesn’t know what happened, but something did. Two of the cousins didn’t communicate with her anymore. She didn’t know why and, for a time, tried to find out but it was hopeless. Heartbroken, she gave up. As time passed, she heard less from the other cousins who were younger than her. She became embittered, angry, and very sad. She didn’t understand. From time to time, she would try to make contact, but it never turned out well.

She still had a relationship with her older cousins, but now the one who wrote the letter and revealed her private business in such a vindictive way had undoubtedly ruined that. She was alone, an orphan.

Except for her friends. Fate had smiled on her regarding her friends. She felt she had the best friends in the world. They had come through for her time and time again. She could never repay them. They had become her family without her realizing it. She hoped they felt the same.

She knew that it was time to move on and leave the dreams of childhood and that big, extended family behind, except for the handful who had stood beside her. The only way to be happy in the future was to find a future without them.

Author’s note: Posts A through H of the #AtoZChallenge are the beginnings of an idea for a novel. Thank you for reading. I would love your comments!

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Posted in Emotional Child Abuse, Fiction

#AtoZChallenge – Gracious

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The only word that could describe her aunt was gracious. The other family on that hill, her second set of parents, were her mother’s sister and her husband. They were childless. Even as an adult, she ran between the two houses and didn’t really differentiate between her parents and her aunt and uncle. She loved them equally. Her aunt, like her grandmother, was a take-charge woman. Liberated, strong, but loving and above all, gracious. In so many ways, she saved her.

Her aunt was a teacher and she made a nice test student. She tested her for reading, math, all skills, from the time she was three or four years old. She insisted she be well-rounded and bought her a piano. She started lessons at seven years old. She had all the reading material that a girl could want. Between her mother and her aunt, they bought her beautiful school clothes in the nearest big city. She often felt like a princess. But, she was shy and most people didn’t know any of this.

Her aunt tried to teach her how to be a lady, but she was a tomboy. They lived in the country and all of her playmates, except two, were boys. She learned to play baseball and was the pitcher. Her aunt just shook her head. Her first love, for all of her life, were her dogs. Her uncle would find dogs by the road and bring them home to her. She would nurse them back to health. Her aunt would smile in spite of herself and shake her head again. She always found time to study and four hours each day to practice piano.

She had great respect for her aunt. She listened to her lessons about life. She listened to her lessons about their family. She particularly listened to her lessons about her parents. Her aunt desperately wanted her to go on into higher education and become self-sufficient. She didn’t really know what that meant then, but later she did and she appreciated her aunt’s push in that direction. She depended on her for so many things.

Later in life, when she was a very young woman, her aunt became ill. Her Daddy was ill. Her mother was ill. Her aunt and her Daddy died within three months of each other. She was forlorn. She still had her mother and uncle. She still had a large extended family. But, she felt the very fabric of her life being ripped out from under her. She was losing the families on the hill and she didn’t know how to cope.

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Posted in Fiction

#AtoZChallenge – Fair

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After her Daddy came back home, she was changed. More mature in ways. Thankful he was back. They became more of a family on that hill. Her mother had grown up only 50 miles away, on a farm in the countryside. Her grandparents were still there. She and her parents visited them often on the weekends, sometimes spending the entire weekend. Sometimes just the day. The other family on the hill, her aunt and uncle, would join them. She was in the fourth grade.

Spending time on the farm was one of the best parts of her childhood. Her grandfather was the most fair and forgiving man. He taught her what men should be like. Her grandmother was a woman before her time. Liberated even then. Calling the shots. She probably got some of her fire and independence from her. But, it was her grandfather she identified with and who she talked with the most.

She was one of the middle cousins in age. Her older cousins were a lot older. She didn’t see them very much or when she did, they saw her as a child. Her younger cousins were either not born yet or still babies. Except for her uncle’s family and he was away in the military. She only saw them once a year. She was most often on the farm alone.

Some mornings, she got up early and went with her grandfather to milk the cows. Other days, he took her in his wagon, pulled by his mules, to his parents farm which seemed far away. It was a beautiful place with the old log cabin still standing. During those times with him, he talked to her about life, people, politics, and most of all, education. Lessons that helped form the rest of her life.

When she stops to think even now, she can see him and hear his laugh. Why do the most important people have to die and leave you?

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Posted in Fiction

#AtoZChallenge – Destructive

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60 years later. Long after that small girl had grown into a woman, a series of destructive experiences threatened to overtake her life. She’d had a good, full, eventful life. A good husband, more than one challenging and fulfilling career, wonderful friends, some supportive family. There were cousins who were like siblings. There had been disagreements between the cousins as there are in every family. There was one special cousin to whom she’d felt bonded since childhood. This cousin hurt the now grown woman’s feelings badly, during a difficult and emotional period in her life. If any cousin would support her, she had thought this cousin would. She was wrong.

The two women had an argument when the woman expressed her feelings of hurt to her cousin. Weeks later, she received a letter in the mail. The cousin said she was “documenting” their disagreement. She read on with interest, not understanding. The cousin recounted their argument. During their argument, the cousin had mentioned some financial dealings they had with each other. The woman was shocked when she saw that this so-called documentation had been copied and mailed to other cousins in the family. Cousins who were no party to the argument. Why would her special cousin possibly involve other cousins? Bother them with a personal disagreement of which they had no knowledge? She was crushed and her heart was broken. It was the most vindictive thing that had ever happened to her.

She learned some valuable lessons that day. No matter how much you trust someone, even in your family, don’t open your heart to them. Don’t ever let family be involved in any of your financial affairs. Don’t let trust come easily.

The woman felt she lost her family that day. She would never be comfortable with them again.

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