April 2023 Newsletter: The Old Man Sends Out a Newsletter!🕰️👴👵
It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man's life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half. ~Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russian Author
Hello Readers, I celebrated my birthday in March. It wasn’t any type of milestone; just another trip around the sun for a middle-aged guy.
I don’t take my birthday off from work or otherwise draw attention to it (aside from announcing it a month later to thousands in a newsletter). However, as I’m plodding along through my fifties, I don’t take birthdays for granted. I am unaware of any male in my family who lived beyond his seventies, so my mortality clock ticks a little louder for me than most at my age.
Luckily for me, the relatively early demise of most of my male ancestors can arguably be attributed to self-inflicted lifestyle wounds. Bad genetics can take its share of the blame, but let’s not overlook the damage caused by my forebears engaging in decades of smoking, heavy drinking, and eating lousy diets.
I am fortunate to live in a more enlightened era where doctors aren’t lauding the benefits of cigarettes. I have learned from the mistakes of others (and my own past mistakes); I have never smoked, I drink a fraction of the alcohol I did twenty years ago, and my eating habits are nothing like those of my country boy dad from Arkansas (his four basic food groups were biscuits, gravy, sausage, and fried pork chops). I certainly have lapses in my wellness regimen; hopefully, they are less frequent and of smaller magnitudes than those of previous generations.
Combine these inherited longevity impediments with the fact that I became a father later in life and I’m especially tuned in to how aging impacts my mindset and capabilities. Being an older dad, I have committed to being a physically active dad, not a wallflower who dodders around spectating from the sidelines.
Age is just a number
That may be a worn-out cliché, but one that can be beneficial. Far too many wave the white flag and surrender to being old far too early. I’m not suggesting that we play pretend and lie about our age, inject Botox, or dye our hair a deep bluish-black color to conceal those grays. I’m suggesting that we do our best to omit aging as an excuse to lead a diminished life.
I know thirty and forty-year-olds who lapsed into referencing themselves as “old guys”. Seriously? You’re going to own that for an untold number of years, you want to be known as the “old guy”? To what benefit?
Today you are younger than you will ever be again. If your age troubles you today, how will you feel next year? In five years? Ten? Stop burning daylight worrying about something that is an inevitable aspect of life!
Appreciate who you are today. Believe it or not, these may be the “good old days”. Nursing homes are full of people who wish they could go back in time a few decades and recapture the “youthful” years they enjoyed in their fifties and sixties.
Writing Update
I have too many ideas to just kick back and relax after Sandusky Reckoning was released! I am 9,000 words into a new project, a 2-3 book series in a different genre than the Sandusky Darkness Series.
I am also outlining a new standalone novel, a mystery set at a Mexican resort, that I plan to dabble in when I inevitably develop attention span issues with the main project.
Take care and see you next month!
Bryan
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His friend is on life support. He’s about to be next. As an RV campground becomes a war zone, will he be the next victim in a body bag?
Brady Sullivan won’t go down without a fight. Hours after retaliating against the savage gang that attacked him and his family, he struggles to stay one step ahead of a corrupt sheriff pushing for his arrest. But he’s forced to flee to another hideout when a vicious crime lord paints a target on his back…
Going dark in a motel room, Brady vows to balance the scales as cruelly staged photos surface endangering his floundering marriage and career. But with competing factions intent on setting him up for the fall, he fears any attempt to engage could end up dead on arrival.
Can he win a brutal power struggle before he takes a fatal bullet?
Sandusky Reckoning is the nail-biting second book in the Sandusky Darkness crime thriller series. If you like characters under siege, shocking twists and turns, and fast-paced action, then you’ll love Bryan W. Conway’s riveting tale.