AGING GRACELESSLY
*note: book promotion today and tomorrow by my favorite zombie & Enfield author, most free:
click here
*
A shout out to Idaho
Homesteader ( long time no hear! ) for this article idea, what to do
differently in your preps as you age.
Modern society, seemingly in a backlash against reality which is all the
rage now, would have us believe that we are in constant motion, a few wrinkles
or grey hairs appearing but certainly nothing to worry about, and then we go to
the hospital and die quietly ( there seems to be a certain “Logan’s Run”
quality to hospital visits now. I’m not
making any accusations but rather an initial inquiry as I don’t have enough
information-cough, cough, opiate epidemic death panels- but I would be rather
worried if I were you ).
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Between pimping for
corporations and banks ( “you can work until seventy, it’s the new 40!” ), and
all the fossils Hollywood desperately attempts to keep propped up for the
silver screen profits, with a bit of unrealistic marketing thrown in, one might
get the impression we are all spring chickens until the very end. Does anyone have the good sense to realize
that aging is an actual real physical event that you can’t wish away, cover in
cosmetics or ignore hoping it goes away?
My short answer to that is, apparently not. The NOL just turned 61 ( I’m eight years
younger than her ) and won’t sit still all day.
Yes, I realize your arthritis is worse if you sit, but damn does she
make me nervous.
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My mother is still dyeing
her hair and they keep going on vacations all over the place. She just now in her Seventies finally
retired. My dad is barely much past a
zombie at this point, but my step mom keeps him working half time even though
he is bringing in two pensions. Is it
human nature to refuse to think you’ll die, or is it something in the water in
these modern times? Or is it a gender
thing? Males seem to care less about the
end of life, ready to greet the grim reaper.
Okay, it’s been real and fun but not real fun, now let me friggin rest,
already!
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Perhaps the Official
Narrative has changed to reflect feminine thinking because dem Bitches be taken
over, yo! With gals, appearance is
everything. If you can slap another coat
of paint of it, it’s brand new! And I’m
not pointing at Political Correctness as the cause of female viewpoints
becoming predominate, either. In a
collapsing society, you could almost make a case that this kind of delusion
would be mandatory anyway. It would have
been interesting to see if that had happened at the end of Rome.
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Anyway, aging isn’t a
philosophy you can agree with or not.
Aging is what it is ( and good golly how I hate that phrase, a platitude
plastered about by parasite corporate lackeys to excuse poor planning and behavior
) and you have little choice in the matter.
Just as being a horny disagreeable Little Shiite when your hormones are
raging in torrents isn’t necessarily a choice ( I’m talking to you Jesus Freak
types that think holiness will transcend biology-how did that work out for the
Papist preachers? ), neither is losing all your hormones. It doesn’t matter how hot the Babalicious is,
you aren’t much interested anymore. It
doesn’t matter how much you used to bench press, because you ain’t doing much
of that anymore.
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No one is suggesting you
sit in a rocker with a much reduced recoil twenty gauge and await the
apocalypse, cursing those young whippersnappers for screwing up the world ( or
cursing the last batch of ne’er-do-wells the Baby Boomers for doing likewise
). Growing old is the same at twenty or
sixty. You still need to push yourself
and refuse to accept being a lazy humper.
You just have to change the dynamic of what you consider “lazy”. It can no longer be virtually unlimited
physical activity.
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Therein lies the danger of
all these stupid bitches painting old age as simply a minor adjustment to an
aching joint or a sagging boob. You need
to work like a draft horse in your youth to compensate for what you cannot
accomplish in your twilight years. If
you listen to today’s cultural voices you could be mistaken and think you have
your whole life to prepare. I mean, when
did it become okay to rent or pay a mortgage during retirement ( sorry, but
staying in a high property tax area equates to about the same thing )? Who started doing that stupid crap?
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Here is the bumper sticker
version of this article: Old Age prepping is the same thing as Calorie Deficit
prepping. If you prepare as if food is
your only criteria, and it soon will be because there will NOT be enough of it
going around, then old age will take care of itself. When you are young, you save up for
retirement by working two jobs. If there
is any debt it is for an eventual rent free home. Then you enter retirement with no debt, period. You never plan on working during retirement (
staying active is not the same as working ).
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That is in normal
times. By planning on having no debt and
no need for a paycheck, it doesn’t matter how physically able-or not-you
are. That is simply common sense
retirement planning and for the life of me I can’t imagine why folks got away
from it. I can guess. Since the 70’s the culture of lifetime debt
has been pushed, no more so than by consumers themselves as they engaged in an
arms race of status symbol seeking ( after all, status is how we decide who
breeds ). As real purchasing power in
wages dropped relentlessly, the only answer was debt. And then more and more debt.
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That status seeking
probably has more to do with our country being a Potemkin Village than from
Bitches turning the place into a Matriarchy, anyway. If you can no longer afford the status
symbol, even in debt, you get the outward appearance of the symbol rather than
the substance. It doesn’t matter how
long you pay on the car or how poorly put together it is, as long as it looks
shiny and new the whole time. It doesn’t
matter how expensive the McMansion is, or how poorly it was constructed, as
long as yours is bigger than The Jones’.
The better your stuff looks ( to include your looks or your career,
regardless of the true cost of those things ) the higher up on the female
hierarchy you breed with ( and for the female, how much higher you rise in
status by breeding with status ).
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So what choice did they
have than to go from debt age adult to retirement than to adult to death
debt? It was the only way to
status. But the last ten years haven’t
been “normal”, by any standards.
Everyone’s decision to embrace debt to the grave wasn’t even enough to
save them. It just chewed them up and
spit them out. If they had stuck to the
original plan of limited debt, and suffered the plunge in status instead, they
wouldn’t be screwed now. And believe me,
you do NOT want to make the same mistake with prepping as you did with
debt. Continued tomorrow.
END ( today's related link http://amzn.to/2BAJAGC )
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there
I'd appreciate a little more distinction between us regular Jesus freaks and the Catholics. The Catholics have a similar problem to the pharisees of old where they add EXTRA laws of their own devising to God's commands, thinking it will make them extra holy. There is nowhere in the Bible that can be used to require singleness, and subsequent celibacy (because fornication/sodomy is not allowed) from priests. By trying to suppress the way God wired us, you get the nasty mess of perversion that they have at the Vatican right now and that they have struggled with for centuries.
ReplyDeleteSincerely, a REAL Jesus freak,
Peace out
I like religious types of all stripes, mainly because the nation state took away the permission to kill me if I was an agnostic or another sect ( not that the FedGov gave two craps saving the Mormons from persecution [ and you wonder why there was almost a war between the LDS'ers and the Blue Coats ] ). I try to live by the Golden Rule, as do the Jesus Freaks, so I think we are mostly culturally compatible there. I even like the Papists, as their Good Works do tend to stick with you for life. I agree with you that their politics are responsible for a great deal of the problems they see now ( even contraception ). But, when I use "freaks" it is more a term of endearment for all Christians and when I use "papists" it is the organized politics of the Roman Catholic Church I am pointed out, not the members of the organization. Hey, I still like most Americans even though the government is a den of vipers. Same difference. But I also see why you'd want to be considered separately. Like I hate Preppers and consider myself a Survivalist, even if the titles are used haphazardly.
DeleteI suppose the best outcome that you could hope for is to adopt the Jack Lalanne fitness program, followed by proper diet, in an attempt to minimize the negative aspects of aging. Ole Jack would probably still be alive if he went in and got a penicillin shot in the early stages of his pneumonia. I don’t know this, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that he just “fug it, I’m tired of living, and 96 is a good run”.
ReplyDeleteIn general, I have no problem with the Christians, having been one myself at one time (I was a Mormon; and yes, contrary to urban legend, Mormon’s are Christians). Most of them it seems try to live good and decent lives. Actually, the biggest, two faced, backstabbing, piece of shit, that I ever met, was a Jehovah’s Witness. Not saying that most are this way, but boy, that bastard sure was!
Of course, if 'ol Jack simply had good genes and would have lived the same length eating fried chicken and drinking his namesake, emulating him would be frustrating and pointless.
DeleteTrue, but few people are the blessed recipients of such genes, at least among those that I have known in my life.
DeleteI had a grandfather that smoked and lived to be 90. But I wouldn’t recommend that anyone try that recipe for success.
I'm also sure that, mostly, nutrition is usually not well understood and I would argue that we have no way of knowing if Jack's recipe is the one you would follow successfully. You hear too much about vegetarians dying or people eating under the "minimum" amount of calories surviving just fine. One day soon we will be seen as ignorant as those who practiced "bleeding" or thought air vapors were factors. Not trying to be contrary-I'm just saying we might be acting like cargo cultists here.
DeleteI did a research project recently on ageing and lifespan and learned that longevity is 60 to 70% genetic and 30 - 40% lifestyle. If you were lucky enough to inherent genes from a father who lived to at least 87 years old or a mother who lived to 91 or older you have a 50% chance of living up to their age or better. If both parents were within that "supercentarion category" you had the potential for living up 104 years old! The remainder of the chance was based on a lifestyle that encompassed a few factors: healthy living, ie eating well, organic veggies AND meat, but NOT being vegan or vegetarian, but having good quality red and white meat or fish every day. (Vegans and vegetarians would show good lab results but died earlier than mild to moderate meat eaters because the good fats that our brains and organs need cannot be found exclusively in plant food but ONLY in animal meats and eggs, milk. To understand that better, read up on the Weston Price info.) Also important in lifestyle is a decent amount of exercise, but not excessive exercise and walking is actually better than almost anything; social life should be good; you should have a partner; decent sex; and imbibing in a little to moderate alcohol is BETTER than no alcohol. Smoking is completely out. Being excited about a hobby or interest is important. And being active in a church or community does help in this regard, as does having faith of some kind. Its all pretty common knowledge. So there's the current research. You can at least work toward the 30% you can control. Once we finish becoming a third world country I'm sure the parameters will change but we do have a little power in our own hands.
ReplyDeleteInteresting-I hadn't realized genetic was THAT high. Damn, that means I'll probably get through most of my 60's, even as is. Punishment for my sins.
Deletejust a thought ,gramma is 93 still smokes ,eats wtf she wants . I prolly shoudnt smoke ,but at 52 ,health is way beyond the average I see today . course I'm a cook and understand proper nutrition , she I think is just stubborn. I dunno good genes or not I think proper food is paramount to proper function . state of mind is next .
Deletehaving some goal of whatever desire is also needed .
I have no idea what the good lord has in store for me or mine .we live ,we die , lets hope for some happy in that time frame
Right, I think most under rate food as the main source of medication.
Delete