In My Prime

I sat at my writing table this week and tried to think of one thing I do better at age 71 than I did when I was in my twenties. I came up with nothing. My paddle stroke might be more efficient, but any improvements in technique are offset by the fact that I’ve lost power in my stroke. Years ago I came upon an old man sitting alone in his beached kayak. I don’t know how long he’d been sitting there, but he was waiting for someone to come by who could help him get out of his boat. Ten years from now, that might be me.

I am comfortable with my age-related physical limitations. I can no longer ride rollercoasters, I can’t get out of a chair quickly without feeling lightheaded, I run awkwardly, and I misjudge the trajectory of fly balls off a bat. (I blame this last one on my old man eyes. There is a point in a ball’s flight when it turns as fuzzy as the tiny print in a paperback novel, then comes back into focus when it is a few feet from my face.) The loss of dexterity, strength, and hand/eye coordination has been gradual, and I have learned to accept it.

I am less okay with the waning of my mental acuity. Unfortunately I experience it everyday in my writing. I think that I’ve already mentioned in a previous blog that good prose now comes slowly for me.* This lack of speed, however, is not a concern; writing is not a race. I worry more that the overall quality of the writing may not be what it once was.

When I was young, I could start writing with only a half-baked idea, and the process of writing would fill in the gaps. Sometimes a small digression in the prose would take me down a path that was more interesting than the original concept. This level of creativity does not happen any more. The act of writing still helps me to clarify my thoughts, but rarely does it produce fresh ideas.

I once thought that the problem might be that I wrote freehand as a young man and have since switched to a keyboard. With that in mind, I’ve gone back to using pen and paper once or twice a week. My voice shows up better on the handwritten page, but the overall quality of the writing remains the same. My neurons just aren’t firing like they used to.

Occasionally I regret having not made full use of my writing skills when they were at their peak. More often I relish the fact that I can still write at all. My days of riding rollercoasters, running 5Ks, and playing left field are over, but I can write everyday.

* It took me three two-hour writing sessions to produce this blog. Even if I include the 500 words that went into my scrap file instead of the published blog, that’s barely 150 words an hour.