Boomer Blues

I started running again, sorta. After being amazingly disciplined with thirty years of getting off my piano playing sedentary ass and running three or four days a week, I stopped two years ago for no reason. Perhaps I thought there was something pathetic about an old fart in a white t-shirt, knee-length shorts, and Adidas, huffing and puffing through the valley park past silently (some not so silently) jeering dog walkers and picnickers. The novelty that kept me going all those years, that of thumbing my nose at the aging process, began to wear thin. Also, it was getting tough to tear myself away from Netflix, Prime, and Crave, television binges being my new alternative to movement of any kind save going to the fridge for a beer.

Qualification

When I say “running again, sorta,” I mean ten minutes is all I can sustain without dropping to a brisk walk and hacking up part of a lung. I’ve been back at it for just a month, though, and these days getting old Mike moving at all is a miracle akin to Moses tying his ass to a tree and walking up Mount Sinai.

What’s The Point

It can’t be like starting from scratch. If all the benefits of decades of strenuous exercise were erased with just two years of indolence, then give me a cigarette and a bucket of KFC with extra skin. This new-age guy’s health regimen is a waste of time if that’s the case.
While we’re on the subject, the interminable “do and don’t” diet terrorism rages on. More fiber, less sugar, more fluids, less salt, no artificial sweeteners, less red meat, more fruits and vegetables, blah, blah. This adds more years to your life, so you can worry longer.

It’s All Just Perspective

A few years back, there was an article in the newspaper about the possibility of eventually almost doubling our average lifespan. I was in a liquor store a few days after it was published (I’m aware of the irony), and the staff were talking about it.
“Who wants to live to 150 anyway?” commented my cashier with disdain.
“Ask someone who’s 149,” I replied.

Getting The Willies

It used to be that when those suspicious internet doctors got ranting about all the hideous vermin residing (or not) in my colon, or the abrasive mini SOS pads scraping out a lethal sepsis portal, I was spooked. These supposed MDs (always pictured with a stethoscope draped around their neck for authenticity) inform you, after a lengthy video you can’t fast-forward, that all your problems stem from an imbalance. And constipation. They have the antidote. Fifty bucks a month for pills you can only get from their website.
After a concert in Texas a while back, I met a vocabulary-challenged good ol’ boy who said, “I buy these big expensive vite-min capsules online. Got fabric in ‘em.”
Of course, he meant fiber.
“Why don’t you just eat an old shirt?” I asked.
He got a thoughtful look on his face. I wonder if he went home and tried it.
Full of anxiety about the bugs in my intestines (I pictured them as microscopic spiders with lobster claws), I get told by another web-loitering Dr. Duck to “Forget everything else; it’s stress that will kill you. Deep breathing and mindfulness can be a great help, but only if you practice them with my guided meditations,” ….. which requires a subscription of fifty bucks a month.

Is It All About Money?

It’s mostly those with a steady income that wax philosophic about “the things money can’t buy.”