I very much enjoyed this article written by Maria Popova over on brainpickings.org. Both comical and heartbreaking, the writer Donald Hall paints a bittersweet picture of old age.
‘- thirty was terrifying, forty I never noticed because I was drunk, fifty was best with a total change of life, sixty began to extend the bliss of fifty -‘
– Donald Hall
Even though I’m basically a child compared to the eighty-seven year old Donald Hall, I feel my age weighing more heavily with every day that passes. Reading this article made me wonder if my creativity would still sustain me if I reach that age. I can only hope that if I do make it that far, I’ll possess enough wit and love of the ironic to still be writing.
© 2016, Gavin Zanker. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Photo by Kevin Dooley licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.
If you’re motivated by impending deadlines — and I do believe that most of us writers are — thinking of aging as an approaching deadline. You’ve got as much time as you’ve got, but you don’t know how much. Just know that there is a deadline, and it will get here eventually.
Fantastically bleak. Though I’m not sure if I’m left feeling depressed or motivated.