Category: Personal

Note: Another strictly personal post. My excuse: a belief that knowing something about the warp-and-woof of an author’s personal life helps readers better understand where she or he is coming from.

Recap
As I described in Frank’s Mornings, during my early morning period I can often let my mind romp freely as I read and take notes on pieces on the three web sites I visit every morning.[1] If there’s not much of interest on these sites I do a bit of writing and/or googling on some of my open questions/topics. After my early morning period, I begin my mid-morning and midday routines.

Mid-Mornings
I usually have two to three mid-morning hours every day. In addition to minor housekeeping and personal hygiene tasks, during this period I address:
– brain exercises (attention, memory)
– email
– reading
– writing.

A few years ago my score on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment instrument (MoCA), taken during a routine physical examination, dropped below the Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) level. A brain volume scan and psychometric tests confirmed an MCI diagnosis. Such a diagnosis is a probable early warning sign of dementia. I wasn’t surprised. Like other 80-year-olds I was starting to notice memory and attention lapses. One purpose of an MoCA assessment is to distinguish between normal age-related cognitive impairment and incipient, or actual dementia. My physician and I took this assessment seriously.

The prevailing medical opinion is that at present there’s nothing that can be done for either incipient or in-progress dementia. This is not true. A comprehensive life-style regime, based in part on cellular and molecular level research, has been developed and has been shown to be successful in a good percentage of cases.[2] One element of this regime is the use of brain exercises aimed at different aspects of cognitive impairment. I investigated, and found several web-based exercises that were fun, and I have apparently benefited from doing them daily.

My doctor administers a version of the MoCA assessment every year, and just recently my score is now above the MCI warning level. Hurrah!

Like everyone else who logs a few hours on the Web everyday, I need to keep on top of my incoming email message stream. During my mid-morning period I delete all the messages I don’t need to look at, scan the few that appear to need immediate attention, and hold the rest for later.

Reading during this period is usually limited to the articles that show up in my email that relate to the topics I’m interested in. Often I just hold these messages for several days while I address higher priority tasks.

Writing is presently a major part of my retirement life. I take notes on my reading, keep up a daily journal, keep up a fair amount of personal correspondence, and write pieces to post to my blog. As a member of a pre-web generation, I make a first draft by hand, and then transcribe it on my workstation. I always have a dozen or more pieces in various stages of completion. In my mid-morning period I often try to make a bit of progress on at least one of these pieces.

Midday
My midday routine starts around eleven thirty and runs to around two. It begins with a few back exercises before a forty-minute walk around the large Southern California suburban development block that circumnavigates my neighborhood. Hwe usually comes with me. During this walk I sometimes use my iPhone and Sony earphones to listen to a podcast that I think might present some useful new information or thoughtful insights. [3]

When we get back home Hwe makes me a light lunch. I usually follow this with a short nap. Lunch is either a small chicken sandwich (on gym days) or a faux meat sandwich, veggie chips, peppermint tea, fruit, and my lunch-time vitamins/supplements.

Afternoons
Afternoons from 2 to 5 are the only time that I have for serious study and writing. Three days a week this time is preempted by essential gym classes and the use of gym exercise machines. This is often followed by a weekly stop at Costco on the way home. On the other four days, during this period I address:
– brain exercises [4]
– email
– studying
– reading
– writing

Unless I’m in crunch mode on a task deadline, I usually put in some more time in on brain exercises.

I take care of any cursory email responses during the midmorning period, but most weeks I have email from family or friends that requires more than a cursory answer. I try to get one of these done during this period.

For me studying and writing go hand-in-hand. I don’t I digest new information unless I write about it. And often I need to do research for a piece I’m writing. These two connected activities are the ones I cherish the most, although on some days I don’t get time for them.

Finding time for serious reading is a challenge. I participate in a zoom-based book club with friends in Montana, so that month’s book has priority. In addition, I’m finding that I like to be simultaneously reading a number of books in history, science, mathematics, and philosophy, as well as a novel. Since I usually take notes on the non-fiction materials I read, a lot of my reading can be considered as studying as well.

I punched up my first computer program in 1970 during my senior year at the University of Chicago. The creation of computer programs was my primary focus for the next fifty years. For the last two years I’ve been entirely focused on the intellectual interests I had to put aside to survive and thrive as a computer programmer, software engineer, seminar presenter, and professor in the work-a-day world. I’m now tentatively and slowly starting to program again.

Early Evenings
My early evening period is similar to my midday period. It begins with a second set of back exercises followed by an hour walk around a few blocks that enclose a neighborhood adjacent to mine. I bring my bowel medicine with me and take it at the halfway mark. This medicine needs to be taken 30 to 45 minutes before a meal.

During this walk I usually listen to the audio portion of the Chris Hayes All In show on MSNBC. The show is definitely left-wing and often exaggerates, but it’s the only one I’m interested in that is available at this time on the streaming services I subscribe to. On Mondays the Rachel Maddow Show follows All In. Rachael’s opening piece is always interesting and afterwards she usually has prominent guests to talk about the latest stories. She is definitely left-wing, but attempts, usually, to keep her language strictly factual. These shows tend to have all the good stuff up front, so toward the end of my walk, and on weekends, I listen to classical music albums via Prime Music.

Hwe often starts this walk with me, but after half a mile cuts off for a shorter walk. When I get back home, Hwe usually has, or nearly has, a full supper ready. The menu is constrained by brain health and bowel functioning considerations. I’ve found that if I eat much fish the arsenic level in my blood elevates. And for brain health I try to minimize my red meat consumption. I have chicken a lot, and large helpings of vegetables. Again I have peppermint tea, veggie chips, fruit, and my supper-time vitamin/supplements. For brain health I minimize sugar consumption, but usually have a small cookie and a small frozen desert.

After supper is video time for an hour or more. Hwe and I try to find some something we can both enjoy. It’s not easy. Our tastes are quite different. Often our best bet is a long running series. These about-an-hour-long episodes are a good fit with the amount of time I want to spend on this activity, but occasionally I’ll watch a feature length movie.

Late Evenings
My activities after video and before bedtime vary:
– a bit of serious reading/studying
– recreational reading

Which activity I do depends on how much time I have and how tired I am. I usually get in at least a half hour of recreational reading before taking a dose of melatonin, strapping on my CPAP machine, and counting my breaths as I fall asleep.

Interrupts
The above describes many of my days, but often  there are the usual interruptions that everyone deals with:
– making social or medical appointments,
– social events
– cultural events
– handling household concerns
– handling financial affairs

Notes
[1] The app editions of the New York Times and the Washington Post; and Letters from an American at substack.com.

[2] The End of Alzheimer’s: The First Program to Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline, Dale Bredesen, 2017; and The End of Alzheimer’s Program: The First Protocol to Enhance Cognition and Reverse Decline at Any Age, 2020

[3] New episodes from Ezra Klein’s Podcast are announced on my NYT app. Usually they are interviews with thoughtful authors. I often check them out. I sometimes listen to episodes on The Hive or Politico Dispatch.

[4] I interleave brain exercises with other tasks. I average about a hour a day on these exercises. You might wonder why, since my MoCA score is now above the MCI level, I put so much energy into maintaining brain health. For me, living out my final years is like nursing a really old car along. Various things start to fall apart, some slowly, some quickly. For me, dying of advanced dementia would be the worse way to go, so in my daily living tme budget, maintaining brain health has a high priority. An additional consideration is that as a US citizen there are nearly insurmountable roadblocks to availing myself of a physician assisted death if I have serious dementia.

One of the gifts of retirement is that I am freed from the necessity of structuring my daily and weekly routines around a job. But a downside of postponing retirement until I was 80 is that the needs and rewards of health maintenance now take up substantial chunks of my time. These needs also require that I maintain more regular habits than I did during my working days. I lay down to sleep between 10 and 10:30 and rise between 6 and 6:30. My aged body no longer produces enough melatonin for a solid night’s sleep, so I supplement with two milliliters of liquid melatonin. As a result, I’m sometimes a bit groggy when I first get up, so the first event of my day is to boil a cup of milk for a double cappuccino.

I enjoy my cappuccino while taking two thyroid pills and using my two Pro iPads to scan the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Letters to America blog. I’m looking for comments that shed light on the fundamental physical, and social forces that are driving the social order of my country, and the First Worldwide Civilization,[1] toward a possibly imminent disastrous dark denouement. A half hour after finishing my cappuccino, I mix and drink my first dose of the daily medicine I need to keep my surgically shorted and disturbed bowels in normal order. A half hour after finishing my cappuccino, I mix and drink my first dose of the daily medicine I need to keep my surgically shorted and disturbed bowels in normal order. Half an hour later I’m ready for a breakfast of two easy-over eggs, a single piece of toast, and a dish of fresh berries and yogurt. Alternatively, I’ll have a bowl of oatmeal, banana, berries, and Ensure. My wife, Hwe, usually makes me breakfast. When I’m pressed for time, I make my own oatmeal dish.

My whole morning routine, which includes taking notes on my internet perusals and my reactions, usually consumes the first two or three hours of my day. My mind comes alive as the caffeine wakes up my groggy brain and the pieces I read stimulate questions and thoughts . Since I usually have no must-do-today tasks, I can give my brain free rein to run and romp with only minimal direction from my mind. But like the tourist who feels compelled to interrupt her pleasure in a new experience to take pictures, I often interrupt my hither-and-yon brain romp to capture in writing some of its restless explorations; like what you are reading just now.

[1] “First Worldwide Civilization:” my own designation. There are presently many disparate cultures in the First Worldwide Civilization, but we all see/hear the same daily news, watch the same movies, read the same books, wear the same clothes, travel in the same conveyances, use the same calendar, etc. Not an original concept, see The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman.

Twenty-four seven my nervous system[1] is constantly receiving input signals from what’s-out-there[2]. From these inputs my brain creates mental patterns of what’s-out-there, i.e., my subjective reality. I am fully aware that these patterns are only approximations of what’s-out-there. I am only human. All the input signals I have received in 82 years are only an infinitesimal part of what is actually out there. I realize that my mental models are only subject to change, incomplete approximations of objective physical reality[3]. Also, my mental models may be incorrect in important aspects. Yet, as I contemplate my mental patterns of objective physical reality, I often experience mind blowing wonderment.

After about 6 thousand years of careful observation, ever increasing reams of data, and ever critical analysis, humankind now understands that it lives in an incomprehensibly large universe of 100 billion galaxies[4] each composed of 100 billion stars. Our current understanding is that all of this came into existence 14 billion years ago in a gigantic explosion of proto-matter. This proto-matter condensed into all of the galaxies, stars, planets, moons, and dust we can detect today. The original explosion sent all of these 100 billion galaxies racing away from each other to create a universe that is presently a trillion trillion trillion kilometers (10²⁷) in diameter. This universe contains about 10⁵² kilograms of matter. All of this matter is composed of only 100 different kinds of molecules. These molecules are in turn composed of only 3 fundamental particles.

In the midst of the vastness of the universe, large, complex, self-replicating molecules came into existence on a middle size planet orbiting around a middle size star in a middle size galaxy. These molecules had an incredible property: they could reproduce! That is, in a suitable environment they were able to spontaneously create copies of themselves. From there they assembled other molecules into entire living organisms that could reproduce. Still more wondrous, embedded in the molecular machinery that drives reproduction of organisms are other mechanisms that ensures that child organisms are not exact copies. So, over the 3 billion years of the existence of life on this planet, these random reproduction ‘flaws,’ (in concert with the necessity that to be successful every lifeform must survive and reproduce) has produced the 2 million species that now inhabit our planet. This intricate natural process of reproduction and environmental interaction eventually produced an animal with a brain that could be used to adapt the animal’s behavior for survival and reproduction in changing environments. So equipped, this animal, homo sapiens, has over the last 20 thousand years come to inhabit almost all of the planet’s terrestrial environments.

There’s more. From her first steps on our planet, to her first steps on the moon, homo sapiens’ big brain enabled her to consciously experience the awe, majesty, and mystery of the universe, and to express her feelings in religion, art, music, and storytelling. Her innate, irrepressible curiosity, and her fierce drive to understand, has led her to unravel the secrets of atoms, the molecules of life, the origin of the stars and planets, and the even the underlying dynamics of the entire universe. With each kernel of knowledge, her sense of the mystery and awesomeness of it all deepened.

So, here I am, one of her sons, awestruck by the wonder of it all. Now, satisfied with my life’s journey and work-free in my twilight years, it pleases me to focus a significant portion of my attention on understanding all that I can of both physical and social objective reality. Every atom of my body was forged in a star; every neuron of my brain a million-year-old inheritance. I am enormously grateful that for 82 years I have been able to consciously appreciate and participate in all that is. I am at ease at the approaching time when my consciousness will wink out, and all the dancing molecules that have enabled it will be released to participate in the universe’s continuing unfolding. Such is the life of all physical entities, from galaxies, to stars, to planets, to living cells.

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[1] neuronic system: the body’s network of neurons plus the cells that respond to external signals by activating connected neurons

[2] Even when I am unconscious or asleep my neuronic system is receiving input from other parts of my body and responding with output signals that keep me alive.

[3] I think that there are two distinct parts to what’s-out-there, i.e, objective reality: physical reality and social reality,

[4[ All quantities are approximations for easy comprehension.