Birthday Boy

Yes, today is my 72nd birthday and I feel great. I am two years older than my father was when he died and the same age as my maternal grandfather when he died (in an accident), but still 28 years shy of the age goal that my mother attained. I’m sitting here thinking about my day and find myself thinking about how fortunate I am and how good I feel about my life at this ripe old age.

To begin with, I am truly healthier than I have been my entire adult life with my weight down to well below where it was when I went off to college at age seventeen. I know I am still a good fifty pounds at least from where I need to ultimately be, but the reduced weight means that I have more energy, can do more physically in comfort and even sleep better (I got 7.5 hours of sleep last night). I am down to only one blood pressure medication, and I’m pretty sure that will fall away shortly since my regular BP readings are coming in at about 116/60 with a pulse of about 54. I still have my doubts about the hinky nature of using blood pressure readings to determine anything, but I seem to be in a minority on that issue, so I’m just happy that I can get my doctor to agree that I don’t need most of those meds anymore.

This week we are joined here at home by our friends Gary & Oswaldo and next week will be joined by our friends Deb & Melissa, so we are in good company this whole time. We don’t tend to do anything extraordinary, but enjoy passing our time with all of them, taking walks and perhaps playing some pickleball or some such activity. Mostly we will dine and laugh and find silly things to pass the time, which is about as good as it gets these days for people of our age. Tonight we will have another dozen people over for a ribeye steak dinner (my request). They will be our local neighbors and my sister Kathy and her husband Bennett. The older you get, the more you appreciate your friends and family for sure.

My plans for the day consist of a version of what I more or less do every day these days. After a breakfast (a treat for me these days) of an omelette made for me by Oswaldo, I will go out to the garage/gym and spend a half hour on the treadmill while I listen to my latest Audible book, which happens to be an autobiography by Barry Diller. I was put onto the book by my friend Steve from Phoenix and I must say I’m very much enjoying it. I particularly enjoy Diller’s candor about his failures as well as successes, but I particularly like the fact that this guy has interacted with almost all the iconic names of Hollywood and television, and even corporate America for the last 50 years. It’s an impressive, interesting and well told story.

After the treadmill, I’m going over for an appointment at Stretch U for my biweekly stretch session. Today is a special birthday treat. I got stretched by this guy, David, who digs in so deep to my muscle fibers (particularly my hamstrings) that I can still feel the searing pain even though it’s been an hour since the stretch ended. I’m now waiting for my trainer, Albert, who I also know from Stretch U, but who now trains me every week with his version of a powerlifting routine scaled down for a regular guy like me. I imagine that later on this afternoon I will take a walk with Buddy through the neighborhood to get in another 30 or 40 minutes of exercise. I note that if you include my stretch session, I will have exercised almost 3 hours today which is a little more than normal for me, but not so unusual these days given that I try and do between one and two hours of exercise of some sort every day. I suppose I could pretend that that’s normal for me, but it would be more appropriate to say that it’s my new normal which I’ve been doing now for about two months and I feel like it and my weight loss program are part of the reason, in fact, a big part of the reason, why I feel great.

So far in the last 24 hours I’ve gotten calls from all three of my children who have dutifully wished me best wishes for my birthday and I’ve gotten various miscellaneous birthday greetings from other friends and family as well. When I think about the span of my day, this is what life is coming down to for me. Yes, I occasionally have work to do but work just so happens not to be figuring into my schedule today where normally I would put in anywhere from 2 to 6 hours of work if I had cases in process. But other than work, everything else I’m spending my day doing is pretty much what I spend my day doing all the time. I’m spending more and more time exercising and taking care of myself. I spent one to two hours writing and perhaps 1 to 2 hours reading or listening to books on tape. I spent time communicating with my family and friends who are more distant. And I try to make sure that I get together with friends as much as I can. When it comes right down to it, I’m not sure there’s much worthwhile in life to do beyond what I’ve just described. I suppose travel might get added in but travel is really about spending time with friends at this point in my life. Seeing things like a tourist in the world at large only has so much interest given how much I’ve already seen, but traveling places with friends and sharing the adventure with them is always good value.

When I listen to Barry Diller‘s life, it’s hard not to see a man who subordinated his personal life for many years in favor of doing what he clearly loved best, which was his work and the building of his career. Barry Diller is certainly an accomplished professional, a man of meaningful impact in Hollywood in other media, including online media and television and he’s managed through those years to accumulate over $5 billion of net worth. That is certainly impressive. I find it particularly interesting that his ride from the start was not about making money and that that was not Diller’s primary objective, but was rather an output from all of the hard work and brilliance that he brought to his work life. I admire that approach and probably always have, but now especially, with the benefit of hindsight and perspective, I believe its the only way to go through life and enjoy it at the same time.