What are your favorite 5 apps on your phone?
From the question we meander through ageing – v- tech!
I like my phone, it’s useful, apps are handy, but I don’t really care about them. Plus I don’t really trust anything tech now.
I’m not one of those older people scared to embrace tech. I was there like a shot right from the start and I’ll try anything if it’s useful. The phone is certainly useful.
It drives me nuts when people in and around my age bracket say they can’t cope.
Read the screen, learn how to use it. You’ve been learning new things all your life! The fact is that people buy tech and don’t want to learn, or in truth don’t want to use it. So don’t buy it.
Don’t make the choice to have it and be miserable, scared to pick it up, spend a fortune and hide from it. That’s the worst way to age.
Tell yourself the truth, you don’t like it, you wish you hadn’t bought it, but tech is too dangerous for you to play scared. You can be hacked, it’s a minefield of pitfalls, nasty players, and manipulative tech industries basically tracking everything we do. You can’t be one foot in and one foot ready to run.
All in or get out.
Which brings me to something useful, and an issue I’m facing down.
The issue
I’m 69. My husband has been very senior in business for over 40 years. He’s a boss and he’s used to calling shots.
I’ve noticed as I get older that it’s easier to say yes because he’s usually right. So I just started saying yes without thinking. Emphatically not his fault.
I’ve also come up against something insane in past weeks that really highlights the issue.
My faithful old Mini has a very stiff gate on reverse gear. I’ve struggled since day one with it, but it’s got so stiff now I can’t get it into reverse, I’ve tried and tried. Tony can do it with his thumb, which makes him laugh and me want to perform an amputation with a rusty knife!
Damn stainless steel it takes all the fun out of things! Kidding of course. He uses a computer so he can’t afford to be a thumbless wonder, plus I like him. 🤣
So, I took over the Electric Puma, gorgeous car to drive, quite different, so relaxing, except that for me it’s getting stuck somehow. I start it exactly as he told me to, and all it does is jump forwards or backwards like a kangaroo. One foot and an emergency stop.
Now Tony has this very annoying thing about him, if anything plays up anyone else can try and try with it to no avail. As soon as he touches it whatever it is will work. Including the ******* car.
Cats accept food from him that they wouldn’t dream of touching if I dish it up.
We went to Ford and I was smiled at gently, older woman, can’t cope, gentle treatment. Yet Google it and the issue comes straight up with several possible causes. As an older woman I managed to discover that!
I was stuck all day last week, and I’m basically trapped at home now. I can’t drive one car and I don’t trust the other. Plus I really need to take care of my health and mindset and I don’t need the stress. I’m praying that I can get to the hospital today for a blood test, the timing of which is critical.
We’ve been talking about a new car, and Tony’s quite rightly worried about the money, as am I.
Today I woke up realising that I have savings, and I can afford a car. Which also makes it much nicer to use my own money!
I’ve kind of drifted into wife who isn’t a wage earner mode. That needs to stop and now. So I’m going car hunting.
Ageing
The upshot of this meandering journey is that when you’re younger you swear you will never get old. Never get like your parents. But especially as a woman you find yourself being written out of life by the younger and more powerful,
Since I’ve retired I’ve noticed the difference in treatment. I’ve also noticed that the days blur into one, so you rarely know what day it is. It actually doesn’t matter. I track the week by the time the shops close. Closing at 4 must be Sunday. Bank holidays are a whole complication we don’t need!
What I’ve noticed the most is that after years of struggling with life it’s become easier for me to say okay. I’ve had all the fights, fought all the battles, it’s easier to just say yes. People think they’ve won, I just can’t be bothered anymore.
Give me several cats and a book.
It’s costing me, I don’t feel like a person anymore. I feel like that packet of biscuits, bit past their sell by date but might still be okay. Or do we just chuck them out, uneaten, no need to fulfil their role of being a nice treat?
I am quite a cheerful and vibrant old tart. 🤣
Trust me you have to laugh at yourself! What you don’t have to do, and in fact not do ever, is allow yourself to think old or be treated as old. You have decades of well practised sarcasm, conversation stoppers, and if absolutely necessary, ruthless put-downs, in your arsenal.
That sassy teenager is still in there, time to stop controlling them! Set them free at last!
Best love
The ageing (thank God) but not old
Amorah – Deb
So what shall I wear today?
Deb Hawken - Amorah 