How Do We [Baby Boomers] Appear to Those Around Us?

“Some things are more precious because they don’t last long.”
― Oscar Wilde

When I was in my 20’s I knew exactly what I looked like to people around me.

I knew that i was relatively handsome, fit and young.

This was affirmed everywhere I went. I wasn’t deluded, unlike most people I know these days.

Then time passed – a lot of it, actually – and I no longer knew.

People started to see and interact with me differently…or not acknowledge me at all.

WTF?

Some refer to this as invisibility, but I prefer other words that don’t provoke ego annihilation.

The weird thing about all this is that I still feel young. Or youngish.

My knees ache a little in the mornings, and my joints are tighter than at any time in memory.

But the truth is I don’t remember what 25 felt like, but I have to assume that no matter what it felt like was irrelevant in the scheme of things.

A childhood friend described a moment recently where he was strolling along the beach and a beautiful young woman passed him by without noticing him.

“I though she might at least glance over…”

“It wasn’t that long ago when we would both smile and maybe look back at one another, and everything would be exactly where it belonged.”

But there is no normal any more.

Getting older requires a constant re-acquaintance with oneself.

But this is easier said than done, particularly for people who spent their lives doing exactly what they wanted to do and remaining child-free.

And people wonder why big corporations want their employees married with children.

Child-Free and Deluded

As a 60-year-old man, I’m the first to admit that I’m neither comfortable with, nor accepting of, my age.

But I’m also not so out of touch with reality that I think I can do a damn thing about it.

This awareness, however, doesn’t make things any better.

I look in the mirror and i see someone who bears only a vague resemblance to the handsome young man who relied on his appearance and charm to open doors.

Now such cavalier behavior comes across as creepy and deluded.

This “old guy” just flirted with me!

Wow. That might have been me.

See, I feel trapped in a body that no longer feels like my own. I’m inside of it bouncing around, unhinged and spiraling.

Who is this person I’ve become?

My 84-year-old mother confessed to me the other day that she still feels like a kid, but knows it’s just life’s way of doing what it does to maintain our instinct for survival.

As many of you who read my blog and know me personally are already aware, I live with a woman half my age.

In another reality, she might very well be my daughter. She is also child-free and rebellious like I was at her age.

Together, we live in a kind of cocoon of art, entertainment and fitness, the later of which being the primary outlet for our interaction with others.

Other men my age have children in the workforce with wives and children of their own. A few are married to the same women they met back in college.

This is normal.

The reason I bring this up is because the only way that men like me mature properly is to deny ourselves introspection through chaos [i.e., distraction].

But because there is no chaos in the form of “a boss,” “children,” an “age-relevant wife” and a culture group built on conformity, I’m like a wild animal that that digs deeper with every step, making my journey more conscious, more aware, and less resilient where acceptance is concerned.

The truth is most people don’t think about any of this to the point of distraction bordering on preoccupation.

They live vicariously through their children, and allow themselves to be swept up into the mindset of friends, wives, country clubs and common vacation destinations.

They throw up their hands, get into the hospital system, and disappear into enclaves populated by others of their kind until they fall ill and die.

This is also normal.

But guess what?

There are others of my kind who fight this every step of the way. Not that it gets us anywhere, but we do it anyway.

God did this to us.

He put us here to do a couple of things and then die.

But many of us refuse to die under any circumstances, so we’re forced to suffer through a kind of extended Purgatory of the mind.

There are books and drugs to calm the mind, both natural and otherwise, but in the end we’re stuck here in these distraction-free zones cannibalizing our innards.

Here are the only ways I know to fight back with a reasonable expectation of success:

1] Travel constantly, or at least every other weekend. While it is nerve-wracking, it usually doesn’t kill us, which makes us stronger, psychologically.

2] Go to the damn gym no matter how crappy you feel because after a workout, you will again find yourself full of enough endorphin high to get you through the next 12 hours. For extra endorphins, lift very heavy weight. There’s nothing like it to get your head back to ground level.

3] Laugh as much as possible. Even if you’re depressed, laughter is a sure-fire way of exorcising noonday demons without the help of a Catholic priest.

4] Retail therapy is an integral part of happiness as we age. Yesterday I bought some new Bose Noise Reduction headphones and it did me good all through last night.

5] Have passionate interests. I’m never bored because I love to play musical instruments, write, read, take photographs go to the gym and watch commercial-free television shows on my Macbook Pro. If you’re not passionate about anything, you’re toast.

6] Spend time each day around normal people so you can appreciate just how wonderful abnormality really is…no matter how bad it can often seem.

7] Spend a lot of time in water. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a shower, bathtub, ocean or swimming pool. There’s something about it that feels cathartic. Yesterday I took three showers, one whirlpool and 20 laps in the swimming pool.

8] Go back to your music collection and play something you really love as loud as possible for 10 minutes, preferably after a glass of wine or a joint if you happen to live in Colorado.

9] Find a massage therapist who actually performs massage, not trigger point. The idea is to feel good, and therefore, escape. this usually works for a good 24 hours.

10] Have erotic sex as often as possible no matter how much it may irritate your lower back. The absence of depression will more than make up for it and keep you feeling relevant and alive.

and last, but not least…

11] Nurture those closest to you. The rest are irrelevant at this point.

You’re welcome.

Final Comment

If you still wonder if or why people don’t see the same young man they saw when you were a young man, please reread this.

The Relevance Demon at Retirement

Relevance is simply the noun form of the adjective “relevant,” which means “important to the matter at hand.” Artists and politicians are always worried about their relevance. If they are no longer relevant, they may not keep their job. Someone without relevance might be called “irrelevant.” https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/relevance

To most people, is kind of like an escape from Purgatory. No more work. Spending time on your own terms.

But for others it’s more like death in slow motion, where everything you accomplished, everything you were in the eyes of the world, fades into oblivion.

~~~

I grew up in a family where the mantra was something along the lines of…“build a business, make a lot of money, have people know who you are.”

So funny, because nobody has the vaguest idea who you are, but rather [and most importantly], what you do.

They’re supposed to be the same things [but aren’t].

Fast-forward decades and I still struggle with this alongside many of you.

Who are we now that we are no longer at the helm of the world, fully engaged in the mechanics of commerce and life as we knew it before retirement?

Ask most retired pro athletes and you’ll get my point.

The body can only take so much abuse before it surrenders. The shoulders give out, joints ache, tendinitis becomes a reality you can no longer overcome.

Now what?

You retire and suddenly the applause stops because you are no longer playing, no longer relevant….no longer ‘alive.’

Many athletes go into coaching, commentating, consulting…whatever.

But it’s rarely enough to fill the void.

The same is true for millions of other successful men who discover that retirement isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, and, in fact, is more like an existential death sentence.

What’s the point of living of you’re not ‘doing?’

What happens when people forget your contributions…when they assume you held a desk job at some insurance company and are thankful not to have a boss breathing don your neck?

Psychologically healthy people don’t give a crap what you think, what you know. They care about what they think, what they know. If you don’t like it, find another fishing buddy.

But it’s been my experience that such people are either filthy rich, and thus, can afford not to care, or what they have accomplished speaks for them.

[i.e., “Oh, yea. He started Google”]

I bring all of this up because I have decided to go back into the business of photography … because I miss it.

But it’s been over 10 years since I was active in the industry, while I pursued fine art photography and writing.

So imagine trying to get back in the fray after a 10 year absence and you find yourself back in the mail room.

It’s not that people don’t respect what you’ve done, but like they say in the entertainment industry, you’re only as good as your last project and it better damn well have been yesterday, not 10 years ago.

With this in mind, I recently had a meeting with my agent and a prominent magazine publisher to explore the possibility of my getting back into cover and editorial shooting.

This is how it went…

Publisher:

“So tell me a little bit about yourself, about your photography career.”

Me:

“Excuse me? You don’t know anything about my work in the industry?”

“No, I really don’t.”

“Have you performed an Internet search or anything?”

“Of course. But what I found appears to be, for the most part, fine art, which is not what we do.”

“I thought I was finished with commercial photography forever. Now I’m back in the mail room. Wow.”

Agent: [jumping in…]

“Jay has had an extraordinarily successful career, but he chose to let it go years ago in favor of fine art, mostly because he could afford to. But his desire to get back into it is great for you and your publication because he’s willing to offer you a free cover and editorial so you don’t have to bring in someone from New York… right, Jay?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

lol.

Boomer Courtney Cox Throws in the Towel on Youth

http://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/celebrity/courteney-cox-regrets-cosmetic-procedures-that-made-her-look-horrible/ar-BBvY4ev?li=BBnb7Kz

In my world, well maintained women of 50 look great.

50, still. But great.

And while, by comparison to average women, they look years younger, I can see them coming and going.

Problems arise when women lose touch with what people around them actually see when they look at them.

It’s kind of like older men in arrested adolescence who express shock when women half their age call them daddy.

Self-actualization is a hard pill to swallow, and it cuts both ways.

This is why therapy should be a part of maintenance. alongside dental visits and annual physicals.

Fame, Power, Money and SEX in Entertainment

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3754559/Fox-News-host-Andrea-Tantaros-files-suit-claiming-network-operates-like-sex-fueled-Playboy-Mansion-like-cult-Roger-Ailes-Bill-O-Reilly-unwanted-sexual-advances.html

Newsflash: It’s not just Fox, and it’s not just entertainment, but mostly entertainment because people who choose this route are most often dealing with some form of psychiatric disability.

This aside, when I was a budding young actor in NYC [and before i chose photography and writing], this kind of thing was commonplace.

If you wanted something, you have to surrender something – usually your dignity.

I mean, come on! You weren’t just asking for a job as a bagger at Whole Foods for god’s sake.

You wanted fame and fortune and everything that goes with it.

That was then.

The great thing about being older is that you can look back at all the shit you had to swallow to get ahead and know that no one will ever pull that shit on you again, not least of which because you’re no longer a hot 22-year-old model with your hands out.

Psychology and the Retirement Nest Egg

Most of us Baby Boomers have launched retirement calculators a thousand times. Almost every financial institution has one, and invariably, the ones we tend to go to offer the most optimistic outlooks on how much we can spend until the day we die.

The problem is that no one knows exactly when they’re going to die, or if they’re going to die for those of us who’ve opted for cryogenic sleep.

Nonetheless, there is still an annual charge for keeping a body on ice, perhaps for a thousand years or more, so there’s that.

So here’s the dirty rotten obnoxious and existential nightmare-provoking truth: You probably won’t outlive your money.

As I stated in my book, Urban Dystrophy, The Perverse Truths About Mid Life in the Big City, a starter portfolio is $5,000,000.

I know I know. How the hell are you supposed to save $5,000,000 on a $500,000 annual salary over the course of 25 or 30 years?

After taxes somewhere in the 39% range, you’re only taking home somewhere in the $300,000 range.

If you own a home that costs $1,000,000, you can expect to pay $25,000 in property taxes and after a 20% deposit, approximately $60,000/year on a mortgage.

Now add electricity and other related home expenses and you’re down to $200,000 — and you haven’t taken a vacation, bought a single meal or paid a single car note.

Back out those expenses and with luck you have approximately $150,000 left over.

If, however, you have 2 kids, you have basically nothing left over.

So, for the past 25 years you’ve made $12,500,000 and don’t have a dime left in the bank.

Even if you were frugal enough to contribute $75,000,000 a year to a retirement account [for 25 years], you would still only have $1,875,000 in contributions, plus investment interest at an average of around 5%, so $2,800,000 – $3,000,000.

Seriously?

If you retire at age 65, that’s not even close to enough for anyone I know.

The reason for this is because you want to live the same way you did before you retired, which means you’ll need a few million more to generate the income you need to avoid running out of money before your time is up.

For most men I know who give a crap about living well in retirement, the number is around $7,000,000.

At a 5% return, you’re still at 350k/year.

If, however, market crashes, feel free to put a bullet in your head because being broke isn’t worth the struggle for older people.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MONEY

Most men my age validate themselves based upon their relative financial security.

And while every psychiatrist on the planet will call bullshit on this because it’s about as unhealthy a perspective as one might have given the vagaries of money.

But nothing is going to change it unless you plan to join a monastic congregation in Burma.

Money is kind of like a living thing that follows you around wherever you go.

When it doesn’t, you have a big fat fucking problem.

Walk into a car dealership, new prospective home…or hell, the Apple store, and see what happens when the money monster isn’t with you and smiling.

Then you know true meaning of nausea.

The reason you feel the hubris of filthy rich older men with the tans, snow white veneers and $3000 suits is because they’ve beaten the system.

They’ve overcome whatever life can throw at them, shy of a brain aneurysm, stroke or stage 3 cancer.

In other words, they can ride out the highs and low of the stock market, or pay marginal tax increases and still live their lives without making any changes whatsoever.

This is where you want to be, but unfortunately, probably won’t be.

The media is always talking about wealth; who has this or that.

Magazines feature $5,000,000 homes like they’re normal abodes for anyone who’s led a reasonably successful life.

But this is a lie.

The only way to afford a home like that is to inherit it or sell something.

Salaries don’t pay for homes in that price rage.

Investment capital does.

Psychologically, this is a massive hurdle for otherwise success older men facing retirement.

You look down the road at the rest of your life and you don’t see the picture you’ve been sold…and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.

Many men lose their younger girlfriends and/or wives to cut backs in lifestyle.

The ones who don’t tend to be with women their own age who have little to no value on the dating market, who and just sty put.

On top of all this we have a government hell bent and determined to tax out of existence everyone in the middle to upper middle class – including the bottom end of the top 3%.

This is because there are more of them than there are people with $100,000,000 or more who don’t feel any tax increases whatsoever.

So now we have an oligarchy and you’re on the wrong side of it.

WHAT TO DO

1] Figure out how much you absolutely, positively need to live the way you want to live and carve your expectations accordingly.

2] Accept that fact that as you near the end of your life, your retirement savings will be nearing the ends of it’s life.

3] Add 5 years to your anticipated lifeline and then hope and pray you don’t outlive it.

4] Find someone in your personal life who can handle stock market turbulence.

5] Don’t marry a gold-digger unless you’re in the $100,000,000 demographic.

My ‘Private Idaho’ of Gym Eccentrics

My health club is like an outpatient psychiatric facility where patients attend daily group therapy sessions between med checks.

It’s a free-floating phantasm we all play a role in creating.

The list of characters that make up this world are as colorful as the disorders that drive them.

Here are my top 10:

1] …

[up next]

Mick Jagger, 72, Fathers 8th Child Melanie Hamrick, 29

Melanie Hamrick, 29, is mother to Jagger’s 8th child.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3691150/Nothing-fazes-Sir-Mick-Jagger-72-set-father-ballerina-girlfriend-Melanie-Hamrick-29.html

BTW, who cares if it’s his 22nd child? He could father a nation and still support them so shut the hell up.

As for the rest of you, try having just one you can afford.

The rest of us are sick of paying your bills.

Aniston Goes Nuclear at Middle Age

Jennifer Aniston is tired of being judged on her appearance.

I don’t blame her.

At some point we all bend over whether we like it or not.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3688255/PIERS-MORGAN-dear-Jennifer-fed-having-body-judged-stop-trying-make-look-Photoshop-perfect-magazine-covers.html

Bottom line here is you can’t have everything, always.

We get youth and beauty, but no money or experience.

Or we get them all at the same time, and then land in jail or rehab or dead.

But the way it usually works is we acquire money and experience over time, but fall apart physically, even if it just looks that way.

For people [like Ms. Aniston] who leveraged their looks to sell a brand, it’s a battle she will lose no matter how much she bitches about being objectified.

Nobody cares what her reaction to aging happens to be.

They only care about what she looks like, as she knows, hence the attitude.

Retirement Bliss? Hardly.

Death or boredom?

I’ll get back to you on that.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/retirement/retirement-is-making-people-more-miserable-than-ever-before/ar-AAhNNSI?li=BBnbfcL

The concept of retirement has been around a long time. But since it’s inception it’s evolved.

In days gone by [around the time the Stones started touring the U.S.], most people were happy to work pretty much anywhere and die pretty much anywhere, because working and dying soon thereafter was considered a normal part of the human experience.

The short time between the day one decided to leave work behind forever and the day his eulogy was read was no more than a few years, so it made sense to take a few last walks on a beach before lights out.

Now a 60-year-old man in good physical and financial health is like an adolescent all over again, and, as you may remember, keeping them quiet for 5 minutes was a pain in the ass.

You’d have to lock them in a room and bolt the doors and windows.

Fast-forward 40 years or so and they reemerge, this time around with bucket lists that include 1] climbing specific mountains, 2] getting new and improved wives, 3] starting new business ventures…and/or finding ways to keep doing what they’ve always done, but on their own time.

You can’t walk a beach forever when you’re in your 60’s or you’ll be walking for the next 30 years.

I only know one man who still does this, but he’s in his late 80’s and didn’t officially retire until about 5 years ago, mostly because he ran out of funds to keep playing the game.

So no. Retirement is a premature death sentence to most people of retirement age who still feel very much alive and well.

As I’ve said so many times before that I’m blue in the face, people don’t die off at 50 or 60 or 70 or 80 the way they used to.

In fact, some don’t seem to die at all as evidenced by the number of childbirths attributed to men in their 80’s with wives in their mid-20’s who’ve been known to add another 20 years to a man’s life.

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