Here I am, 34,000 feet above sea level traversing the breadth of the South China Sea, trying to type my thoughts to update a blog that has seen a dearth of ideas (and not to mention, postings). Every morning I would wake up with new things to be written; things that would have no relation whatsoever to what I had thought of writing just before I fell asleep the night before. Throughout each day I would be bombarded with more and more ideas, but one would take precedence over the past one as the hour progressed; in the end, I ended up not writing anything.
It is the final day of the month of June 2011 when I am “penning” these thoughts. In nine days, I would be celebrating my 45th birthday, and again I would be thinking about the achievements (or lack thereof) of the past year. Every year since the birth of this blog, I would reminisce and write about the things (often good ones) that have occurred over the past year. Perhaps, this year I would try to digress, if a little, and do something entirely different.
Should I talk about my wife? Or should I talk about my kids? Perhaps I should write something about my job? Perhaps I should write on something that would be the focal point where all these would overlap.
Being 45 means I would have gone way past the half-life of the average life expectancy of modern man – 69, according to UN estimates. Half a century ago I would have been in my twilight years as the global average was 52. Since I turned 40, I have been religiously (save for 2008) going for my twice-yearly full medical screening, not for myself, but for my family, for the job that I have, for good friends whose company I enjoy having, for those whose job rely on how I deal with them in order for them to survive hitch after hitch offshore. At 45, most would be looking forward to retirement; I cannot afford to do so. I will have to try somehow to make myself useful until I am at least 60 years old. I am struggling to lose weight; diet alone would not help, or so people kept telling me, but with two busted ankles, metatarsals on both feet, previously dislocated shoulders have contributed to my current state of weight, and deny me the ability to go to the gym to run on treadmills and lift weights – hence my motto: “No Pain, No Pain.”
But I do take lots of precautionary measures: I down a tablespoonful of pure virgin olive oil every morning before work and at least a tablespoon of organic apple cider vinegar to help my body system; with clear tumour markers bearing negative results, a total cholesterol level of 4.2, and fasting serum sugar of 5.4mmol/l. On top of that the stress-echo test revealed that my heart’s in good condition still.
“…my birthday resolution is to write out my blog entries, have a photo taken of each posting, before I type them out again for them to be posted here…”
As I approach 45, I noticed that my handwriting has gotten worse. Even my signature nowadays looks like a miserable attempt by someone else to forge it, no thanks in part to computers: typing things out have made writing almost redundant. Therefore, my birthday resolution is to write out my blog entries, have a photo taken of each posting, before I type them out again for them to be posted here. I still have the Starbucks organiser for 2010 that my wife gave me (I’m still using the 2009 one), and I will fill that up with my blog postings before I switch to Moleskin ® notebooks.
I’ll call them, my “handwritten legacy.” At least one day after I am gone, my loved ones can look at them and imagine when I wrote each and every entry.
Yes, they would make excellent legacy.
SeaDemon Says 