{"id":13206,"date":"2018-09-02T16:01:37","date_gmt":"2018-09-02T23:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/?p=13206"},"modified":"2018-09-03T13:13:23","modified_gmt":"2018-09-03T20:13:23","slug":"65-years-young","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/65-years-young\/","title":{"rendered":"65 Years Young!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just kidding. 65 is old, very old, a time of Medicare, high cholesterol, and a dread of seeing that your shoes are untied and you have to go ALL THE WAY DOWN THERE to tie them.<\/p>\n

Last week on my birthday, I wore my discounted Burberry dress to go out to dinner, vaping my MedMen<\/strong><\/a> product before leaving the house. The bridge entrance to Long Beach was closed, so we took a different route that had us driving around lost for a quite a while. Suddenly we made a turn and found we were driving into oncoming traffic. I didn’t see my life rewinding before my eyes but I did feel a frisson of excitement: WE’RE GOING TO DIE! I thought for a moment, and it was okay, because I was strapped into my seat-belt and wearing a nice dress. It would be quick and better than being cut into pieces by a maniac (too much crime TV.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, we lived to make a u-turn. Dinner was good. The restaurant had huge screens showing 80s MTV videos, including my favorite Pat Benator song, Love is a Battlefield<\/a>. She’s a warrior in a tube top and scrunched-down boots, shouting, “We are young!!!!”<\/p>\n

Being young is really great. If you’re reading this and you’re young, go out and do everything except opiates, and don’t date guys from the internet who will cut you into pieces and throw them in a ditch so it takes law enforcement seven months to find you.<\/p>\n

I hate the commercials I keep seeing with grey-haired old ladies tramping through the hills, bragging about how good they feel and how much they still plan to do. Fuck them.<\/p>\n

I really don’t want to do anything, and I’m too old to do it anyway. I do want to finish up my time on earth with less mental suffering. So I keep reading about depression and PTSD, every new study, new treatments, new evidence that your very DNA is a portent of doom. I know that rumination is not helpful but I pretend that what I’m doing is “research.”<\/p>\n

But now, my “research” has led me to Metacognitive Therapy<\/a>. The strategy here is to stop the rumination by interrupting it. Not analyzing why you do it or why you can’t control it. When the thought appears, don’t engage with it. Practice turning your attention elsewhere. Simple as that. Also, add more activities to your daily life, limiting your time to churn worries and self-recrimination.<\/p>\n

When you’re caught up in negative rumination, your brain is struggling with itself but it thinks it must continue, like it’s a taking the SAT and isn’t allowed to turn it in, incomplete.<\/p>\n

My plan is to listen to more music, read short stories, write more, smoke more weed, find some volunteer work with disabled people, make some bad folk art and keep my hair looking good.<\/p>\n

I’m still going to think about death because I like the subject. For example, this story of an 104 year old man<\/a> who wanted to get it over with is so touching and filled with profound questions and insights. David Goodall seems like a great guy who was more than ready to exit. I love his last words before losing consciousness:<\/p>\n

This is taking an awfully long time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Thoughts, advice, birthday wishes, anyone?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Just kidding. 65 is old, very old, a time of Medicare, high cholesterol, and a dread of seeing that your shoes are untied and you have to go ALL THE WAY DOWN THERE to tie them. Last week on my … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13214,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[9,5,6],"tags":[953,475,204,1035],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godammit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/crying-lady-65.jpg?fit=495%2C599&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7t44M-3r0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13206"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13206"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13213,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13206\/revisions\/13213"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}