I started this column about 10 years ago. It’s a little piece about saying goodbye to your long-time East Coast home and heading to the West Coast.
That was back before “blogs” and Facebook, or at least my personal involvement in such. It was going to be offered as a “guest column” in some local newspaper.
Now, I have this forum called “Geezer Alert,” my four-year-old blog that has been dormant since May as my wife and I finally got around to this whole monumental California moving thing.
Oh yes, now it’s going to happen. The new house has been bought — in a Los Angeles community called Westchester. The boxes have been packed. The movers are coming.
“What took you so long?” you may ask. After all, as many know, I’ve been talking about the move since the mid-2000s, Back then, it was a way to get closer to my mother, brother and oldest son while escaping the grayness of the Mohawk Valley for the perfect-weather Golden State.
Well, it’s a long and sordid tale, full of family and financial drama that is best left private.
Suffice it to say I was 100 percent for the move 10 years ago, in my mid-50s. Now, with the passage of time and resultant slow drainage of energy, it’s more like 51-49. The scale is tilted westward by family, which now includes a daughter-in-law, two grandchildren and a vast array of in-laws.
Of course, the move to warmer climes by geezers, at least for the winter months, is a cliché in northern states. Snow and cold become increasingly tough to handle with age.
For most of the over-60 set in the northeast, the winter destination is Florida, if they can at all afford it. They’re called “snow birds.” Many, like my late father, also make the Sunshine State their final destination of choice.
Florida never appealed to me, mostly because if its overwhelmingly older population, its torrid summer weather and its tendency to draw storms that get names, like last week’s Hurricane Matthew.
On the other hand, California always has been a draw for my family despite having its own major drawback: earthquakes (the big one is coming!), traffic, annual Santa Ana winds and frequent scorching temperatures.
Overall, my West Coast family just loves their lives there and seems just so much happier than your standard East Coast, winter-ravaged, sun-deprived individual.
Within a year, I hope to be one of them.
It will take about that long to unpack our dozens of boxes, locate new physicians, set up new comfort zones and deal with the debt that the move will create.
Meanwhile, some may wonder what is driving that 49 percent of me that came to accept spending the rest of my life in our Clinton, NY, home of 32 years.
Primarily, it was a forced attitude change accompanied by the general fatigue of life in my 60s.
After a few years of depression over the prospect of not moving to California, I realized that, for my mental health, I had to stop pining for something I could not have. I had to see the positives of my actual life situation and count my blessings.
Once I made that internal head adjustment (despite misgivings about the Mohawk Valley, as noted in my blog of September 2015, “Hometown pride, unplugged”) things did start to improve, at least on a day-to-day basis: My mantra was, “Appreciate each day, appreciate each good thing about having a home, a family, relatively good health, etc.”
I accomplished a lifelong dream of writing a mystery novel, managed to finish a second mystery novel, lost 45-50 pounds (after a mild diabetes scare) and began a regular swim program that has kept me mentally and physically fit.
Along the way, though, as age would have it, I increasingly began to depend on “comfort zones,” that relaxing atmosphere in which we know exactly how and where our daily needs will be met — from shopping, reading and social networking to getting emergency medical attention.
Of course, such zones are the targets of much derision among the younger set (or even some of the more active seniors). They present the image of stodgy, stuck-in-their-ways geezers.
There’s merit in both pro and anti comfort zone arguments, I believe.
Having predictable routines lessens stress, allows mental journeys into other areas (when you’re not putting thought into day-to-day stuff) and keeps increasingly important things under control (like exercise, medications, appointments, etc.).
But there is the constant threat of inertia, boredom, stagnation — all those negative lifestyle situations we fear or dread as precursors to imminent death.
We humans are wired to admire adventure, excitement and spontaneity. We scorn images of persons sitting around, doing nothing, or simply accepting a dull, routine existence.
For most of us, then, the challenge is to find that balance that keeps us energized enough to maintain an interesting life and rested enough to cope with it.
That ‘s what I was striving for in Clinton over the last decade. But I was always aware there was would come a time when that apple cart would need to be upended, or at least emptied and refilled. Geezers, if they are being responsible (see “Geezer Alert” post of May 7, 2015, “Past lives, once removed) simplify and downsize.
So, part of our current move was inevitable. We needed to purge our empty nest and get ready for the retirement years. As I noted in that May post, I just wish we had started much earlier.
And the drastic, cross-country drive aspect — with our 12-year-dog Yogi suffering from dementia symptoms — is heating up the transition a few degrees, from merely exhausting to stomach-churning and frightening.
Very little has gone the way I hoped or wanted 10 years ago — or even one year ago, really. Now I am assisting my family in their plan for a cross-country move.
But bottom line, as the winter months flow by, I will be in the California sun, close to my family.
By spring of next year perhaps I will be able to say hey, it was all worth it.
So, I’ll be shutting down my computer at this point and packing it up for the movers.
Wish us luck, and good-bye, Clinton — it’s been a good run.
That was back before “blogs” and Facebook, or at least my personal involvement in such. It was going to be offered as a “guest column” in some local newspaper.
Now, I have this forum called “Geezer Alert,” my four-year-old blog that has been dormant since May as my wife and I finally got around to this whole monumental California moving thing.
Oh yes, now it’s going to happen. The new house has been bought — in a Los Angeles community called Westchester. The boxes have been packed. The movers are coming.
“What took you so long?” you may ask. After all, as many know, I’ve been talking about the move since the mid-2000s, Back then, it was a way to get closer to my mother, brother and oldest son while escaping the grayness of the Mohawk Valley for the perfect-weather Golden State.
Well, it’s a long and sordid tale, full of family and financial drama that is best left private.
Suffice it to say I was 100 percent for the move 10 years ago, in my mid-50s. Now, with the passage of time and resultant slow drainage of energy, it’s more like 51-49. The scale is tilted westward by family, which now includes a daughter-in-law, two grandchildren and a vast array of in-laws.
Of course, the move to warmer climes by geezers, at least for the winter months, is a cliché in northern states. Snow and cold become increasingly tough to handle with age.
For most of the over-60 set in the northeast, the winter destination is Florida, if they can at all afford it. They’re called “snow birds.” Many, like my late father, also make the Sunshine State their final destination of choice.
Florida never appealed to me, mostly because if its overwhelmingly older population, its torrid summer weather and its tendency to draw storms that get names, like last week’s Hurricane Matthew.
On the other hand, California always has been a draw for my family despite having its own major drawback: earthquakes (the big one is coming!), traffic, annual Santa Ana winds and frequent scorching temperatures.
Overall, my West Coast family just loves their lives there and seems just so much happier than your standard East Coast, winter-ravaged, sun-deprived individual.
Within a year, I hope to be one of them.
It will take about that long to unpack our dozens of boxes, locate new physicians, set up new comfort zones and deal with the debt that the move will create.
Meanwhile, some may wonder what is driving that 49 percent of me that came to accept spending the rest of my life in our Clinton, NY, home of 32 years.
Primarily, it was a forced attitude change accompanied by the general fatigue of life in my 60s.
After a few years of depression over the prospect of not moving to California, I realized that, for my mental health, I had to stop pining for something I could not have. I had to see the positives of my actual life situation and count my blessings.
Once I made that internal head adjustment (despite misgivings about the Mohawk Valley, as noted in my blog of September 2015, “Hometown pride, unplugged”) things did start to improve, at least on a day-to-day basis: My mantra was, “Appreciate each day, appreciate each good thing about having a home, a family, relatively good health, etc.”
I accomplished a lifelong dream of writing a mystery novel, managed to finish a second mystery novel, lost 45-50 pounds (after a mild diabetes scare) and began a regular swim program that has kept me mentally and physically fit.
Along the way, though, as age would have it, I increasingly began to depend on “comfort zones,” that relaxing atmosphere in which we know exactly how and where our daily needs will be met — from shopping, reading and social networking to getting emergency medical attention.
Of course, such zones are the targets of much derision among the younger set (or even some of the more active seniors). They present the image of stodgy, stuck-in-their-ways geezers.
There’s merit in both pro and anti comfort zone arguments, I believe.
Having predictable routines lessens stress, allows mental journeys into other areas (when you’re not putting thought into day-to-day stuff) and keeps increasingly important things under control (like exercise, medications, appointments, etc.).
But there is the constant threat of inertia, boredom, stagnation — all those negative lifestyle situations we fear or dread as precursors to imminent death.
We humans are wired to admire adventure, excitement and spontaneity. We scorn images of persons sitting around, doing nothing, or simply accepting a dull, routine existence.
For most of us, then, the challenge is to find that balance that keeps us energized enough to maintain an interesting life and rested enough to cope with it.
That ‘s what I was striving for in Clinton over the last decade. But I was always aware there was would come a time when that apple cart would need to be upended, or at least emptied and refilled. Geezers, if they are being responsible (see “Geezer Alert” post of May 7, 2015, “Past lives, once removed) simplify and downsize.
So, part of our current move was inevitable. We needed to purge our empty nest and get ready for the retirement years. As I noted in that May post, I just wish we had started much earlier.
And the drastic, cross-country drive aspect — with our 12-year-dog Yogi suffering from dementia symptoms — is heating up the transition a few degrees, from merely exhausting to stomach-churning and frightening.
Very little has gone the way I hoped or wanted 10 years ago — or even one year ago, really. Now I am assisting my family in their plan for a cross-country move.
But bottom line, as the winter months flow by, I will be in the California sun, close to my family.
By spring of next year perhaps I will be able to say hey, it was all worth it.
So, I’ll be shutting down my computer at this point and packing it up for the movers.
Wish us luck, and good-bye, Clinton — it’s been a good run.