When one day starts to feel like the day before; when you find yourself obsessing about what to have for dinner; when you are "filling time" watching TV and can't remember the name of an actor - you wonder what was so great about reaching 80 relatively unscathed.
I mention "filling time" because that is, I think, one of the most insidious elements of growing older. You think you are following the advice to "keep yourself occupied," when in fact you are simply filling in time. Before you know it the day is gone and you can now fret about what to have for breakfast tomorrow and what day is tomorrow?
If all this sounds familiar to you, it has become an everyday experience for me, the self-anointed guru of staying focussed and maintaining a productive routine.
After nearly six weeks of illness, pain, hospital confinement, and the limitations of movement imposed by hip surgery, I am coming out the other side.
I even remembered the name:Gene Hackman. But that is another story.
I am taking hold again. Now I am going to be in control of my day. Now I can take some of my own advice and stay involved.
I have a friend, a bit younger than I, who filled his day playing bridge at a club but has had it evaporate with the death of partners. I ask him what he does to stay focussed, to maintain a schedule - he says that he reads the Globe and Mail from cover to cover and by that time it is time for lunch. Not good enough.
In my most productive years I awoke to the need to absorb the news from as many sources as possible before going to work. I would write opinions, short opinion essays. It kept e busy. What's more, it made me relevant. I have said before, and it is in my book "Blindsided by Retirement" that feeling irrelevant is toxic. Having something to say but nowhere to say it is frustrating. I would quote Archimedes announcing: "Give me a place to stand and I can move the world."
I lost my place to stand, but I did not lose my obligation to be relevant, even if only to myself, some old colleagues, and my family.

Buzz Hargrove has made a pact with the devil. To save jobs and perhaps prolong the death throes of the Canadian auto industry, he conceded to the Ford Motor Company that his members would not ask for a wage increase, and to sustain the faltering auto giant, would reduce the value of certain benefits.
When GM announced the layoff of one full shift at the Oshawa truck plant, the entire Durham region groaned. Buzz suggested that somehow there should have been job sharing instead of layoffs.
The whole idea of shortening the work week to give more workers a job has foundered. In fact, part of Sarkozy's victory, a triumph for the Right, is his pledge to "put people back to work." What he means is that for the sake of productivity, France should not continue with its short work week and start sweating its workers. (My words not his.)
The other question is, would the GM workers, most of whom voted for Jim Flaherty and the Conservatives, be self-sacrificing enough to give some of their work time to keep their fellow workers employed? Clearly they would not.
But the idea has its merits. Of course, the Federal government, through Employment Insurance, would be obliged to "top up" the earning somewhat. Everyone would take a hit but the long term benefits would be enhanced prosperity.
I am not so naive as to believe that there is such benevolence that workers and government would give. Frank Stronach who wants to build an electric car, has told the auto industry it has to cut wages.
Unfortunately it is Big Business that holds that ruling hand. Their decision to out source, to look for low wage labour markets, is inimical to the maintenance of healthy living standard for all our workers.
They are, and will continue to be, a disposable commodity.