There are a lot of wonderful quotes around expressing the idea that all we have is today. That is becoming more and more important to me with each passing moment as I race forward into my third childhood. It seems that recently not a day passes without my reflecting on that question coming up again, “What haven’t I done with this day that I should have or might have done?”
Exercise. I write that down on my list every morning and often I find it is already 10 PM and I haven’t done anything but ride my stationary bicycle for twenty minutes. There are five other things I try to do involving standing, laying on the floor, standing against a door jam, using light weights and walking. When I do them all my agility improves.
Mind exercises. I do some memory exercises during the day, perhaps while walking. I used to take long walks and run through my speech material reciting one story after another mentally. If I was in a secluded spot I might do them out loud working on the rhythms and timing or the vocal varieties such as a whisper or a shout. When I go to bed I sometimes see if I can remember the titles of the sixty or so songs that I have written. Last night I got to fifty seven. When I was really doing a lot of speaking I used to remember the names of up to a hundred different bits, or clumps or vignettes. They were speech segments, most lasting about seven minutes or so. Over the years my dear friend, Terry Pochert, who has done my video presentations for our clients, has captured about thirty or more of those.
Contacts. For some reason I don’t do much on Facebook. When I was playing that character Almost Andy as an Andy Griffith look alike a lot of strangers flocked to my Facebook site but I never explored it. Soon it seemed to me to be a place where others met to exchange conversations that I was in no way involved in. I never took the time to figure Facebook out. I still keep in touch with others by e-mail or by this Monday Morning Memo.
Like most old dogs I have observed over the years, I am not learning a whole lot of new tricks. Trouble is I am forgetting a whole lot of the old ones.
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