Thursday, September 28, 2000

 

10:20 a.m. The good thing about a day that's slack (yesterday) is that I always wake up the next day and work at a double-time pace, and gratefully. I've only been up for a few hours and already, most of the things I was neglecting yesterday have been watered, cleaned, edited, approved, finished today. It was always that easy -- but yesterday I couldn't see it.

Yesterday I was immature; today we'll discuss aging. We all do it. Some of us are particularly good at it, and although there are no gold medals or gold records awarded, some people are real champions and artists of the process.

I've often wondered whether a nice old person was a nice young person -- or did she change along the way? Was a mean old codger a selfish young whippersnapper, or did he just turn sour like cheap wine?

1:44 a.m. Sigh. There I was, going off on a very potent tangent (How People Are The Way They Are), when something or other came between me and my creativity. Whatever it was, it ran me down and left me flattened and I didn't even get the make of the vehicle. Oh well.

I know I was thinking about the process of aging. It's something we're all doing, constantly, in fact, and you'd think we'd be better at it, wouldn't you? At one point in the middle of the day I was looking through the new TV Guide at the Fall Preview announcements and I noticed that Cybill Shepherd is looking mighty spry, suddenly.

Why, it was only a few years ago that she was really looking her age and now: She's turned into a smoothie. Ditto Bette. I think people who've had a lot of work done on their faces really ought to have an asterisk placed beside their "age" whenever it's listed. She's not really 53 anymore; she's 53*. I'm 53. Otherwise, it makes me look bad.

Yeah, I'm jealous because I'm too chicken to consider having my face spread out on the table beside me and then refitted and tightened up and sewn back on, hopefully right-side out. I just don't have enough trust to consider such a thing. Look what they've managed to do with my good angora sweater ... or my prized penny loafers ... and look how they get the order wrong on a simple kung fu lo mein, and you can understand my reluctance to put my rosy cheeks in between calipers.

Anyway, the topic I was considering was aging gracefully and naturally and I somehow lost track of it. I have some excellent stuff to include in this topic, by the way, including caloric restriction, which they're predicting will increase our life span to 170, easy; and which I personally stumbled across by practicing it without a license.

I will reveal all tomorrow, as I seek to write in the morning once again. I've got to start a little earlier in my plan to become dotty, because I sense it's the only way I'm ever going to have enough time for myself. My first action the next time someone asks me about work is going to be the Absentminded Shrug, which, once perfected, should allow me a whole extra hour in the day, at least.

After the Shrug, I will throw out the Blank Stare. And then go back to doing exactly what I want to do.