I was talking with another writer recently who is much older than I am, by more than ten years. They mentioned casually that they realistically only had ten to fifteen years left in terms of planning things for their life.
Whoa.
That was kind of a shocking reality check.
They probably aren’t inaccurate with their numbers. While we’d all like to say we’ll live forever (or until 120, which has always been my personal goal) it isn’t necessarily accurate.
It got me thinking about what I have in terms of life expectancy, and what sort of additional long-term planning I need to start.
Right now.
My husband and I have wills, as well as a literary estate. However, we did them back in 2015 and they need to be redone.
Side note: if you’re a writer and you’re reading this, I’m begging you to PLEASE create a will. You have intellectual property that will need to be valued, as well as taken care of by your heirs. Your copyright will remain in effect, and your heirs will continue to make money from your books, for seventy years after your death. I know of a writer who recently died who had published upwards of two hundred books, and yet despite me begging him for years, still didn’t have a will. His widow is in a world of hurt right now. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE get a will that at least mentions your intellectual property!
/End of rant—hops off soapbox
I still have quite a few years left in me. Possibly as many as thirty-plus, given my family history. (The ones who died younger all pretty much died of heart attacks and also smoked and drank a lot.)
It’s still daunting to look ahead and count those days. To realize that you don’t have as many as you thought.
However, instead of being depressed by this realization, I’m choosing to be invigorated.
I’ve never created a bucket list. Maybe it’s time that I do, just to keep track and start marking stuff off. I can start to relish each and every day and make sure that I’m never just “marking time” until I run out of it.
I don’t anticipate a frenzied approach to the start of the approach to the end. I’m not about to become some social butterfly. But I do want to strengthen the friendships that I have, to talk to the people I know, and to stay in touch even in my introverted way.
I think that this is the way to go, at least for me. Instead of a hurried approach to the final years, do a deepening of everything instead. Diving deep into the well, not so much skimming along the surface.
It means that taking care of myself continues to be a priority so that I feel good all the way to the end. Taking care of my body, losing the weight that I’ve gained, and getting the meds right (with the understanding that the balance will change more than once in the coming years, and that I’ll have to do this rebalancing frequently).
For years, I’ve said that I want to maintain good balance so that when I’m eighty, I won’t fall over and break a hip. When I was doing PT for my knee, my therapist commented more than once that I have, “Crazy good balance.”
Thinking about it, I realized that eighty is less than twenty years away.
Yikes.
So I’ll keep up my balance exercises, which I do every day. I’ve recently started a series of exercises to strengthen my hips, and that’s helped in terms of pain. I’m still going to get X-rays done to see what the structural damage looks like, but maybe I can delay getting a hip replaced. The eyes are going—not much I can do for those. Cataract surgery is looming. I am taking care of my hands so that maybe I can delay that surgery as well. Every time I stress the organic knee I immediately start to baby it. Never want to have knee surgery on it if I can help it.
Etc.
There will be more revelations regarding long-term planning when your days are shorter, I’m sure. And I’ll share them as appropriate.
In the meanwhile, I think it’s time to get up out of the chair and go walk again.
Just one of those things that I’m going to do with even more regularity, now that I realize just how loudly that clock is ticking.
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