I TURNED 85 TODAY

I don’t like the title.  “I’m 80.  I’m OLD”.  That irritated me
immediately because I think of it as negative and as I read on I thought,
“He’s whining.”  I continued to read and my feelings lightened up, your
humor had eased in, and then along came observations, wisdom, reality,
and wonderful life lessons given to you by your parents.  All these
feelings came from the first reading.

I thought about writing back to you right away, but decided I wanted to
think on this and read it again.  I went out and cleaned the garage and
inhaled fresh air (well, there was some dust in it). I came back in after
almost an hour, fixed a sandwich, and returned to the blog.

As I nibbled at tuna on rye, I read the blog again.  I still don’t like
the title.  I would much prefer “I’m 80.  I think that means I’m old”. 
I realize, however, after yet a third reading, that you must genuinely
feel OLD and that’s a shame.  You should be celebrating 80 years of
having accomplished living through good times as well as bad, and
accomplishing all that you have.  You are anything other than
“unremarkable”.  Perhaps you are an “old fart”, but I don’t know you
well enough yet to make that determination.  I was married to an “old
fart” and Don was a delightful and wonderful man with character.  You
don’t need to go into bragging, but you don’t need to label yourself
“unremarkable”.

I understand that you are still in a “down” place from time to time as
you grieve Chris’s death. [Christina, my wife of 50 years, had passed away in April 2020.]  Those feelings are certainly going to influence the way you see things.  But I am shaking you right now and telling you to stop that and relish the incredibly long time you had with her and remember the good times with fondness and love.  Don’t let the sadness color the way you present yourself to the rest of us. Readers of your blog want to grow up and be just like you when they reach 80.  I’m sure there are many that hope & pray they WILL reach
80.  They don’t want to hear how miserable you think you are.

I am not saying that you should not feel the way you appear to; you’ve
earned that pain and the sorrow.  To move forward through those gale
winds, you needs to feel the honest parts of the bad things in life. 
But I suggest you look again at what you want your readers to read.  Do
you want them to learn something fro you or feel sorry for you?

So what do I think?  It’s just the beginning that rubs me the wrong
way.  Everything else you share is YOU and presented in the way you
usually talk about things.