Toward the end of last year, I wrote the following draft of what I thought would be my final Geezer piece.

If I had a regular job, this would be a retirement announcement. About going from on to off. Since I don’t have a regular job, this is about a passage made up of bits and bobs. A change from a defined way (despite not having a paychcck) to a vague hodgepodge of endeavors.

Sixty-five years of writing and seeking a readership is enough. It has been a pleasure but also work – fulfilling, but an obligation.

So now I’m going to spend what time I have left not worrying about whether what I have written is embarrassing and give in to a life of being without striving. One exception: continue diligent and disciplined effort to slow further deterioration of my spine.

Read in the blissful way that I read comic books as a boy.  

Enjoy more of the fine music that is a constant offering in this city.    

Maybe in a leisurely way finish editing the Pinto novel..

Do what old people often do – go through boxes of letters and mementos to see what they offer of definition and quiet.

Forgive myself for needing so much sleep.

Yes – be without striving.

I never published this “retirement” announcement. Instead, not long after, I wrote in a Geezer piece that I was going to put the finishing touches on a historical adventure novel that I’ve been fooling around with since 1993. To free up time, I would take a leave from writing Ruminations. (I had another reason, too, which I’ll come back to down the page.) The leave taking was easy. The novel is still in process. I have many excuses for not finishing it. Maybe I’ve just not been passionate enough. But there is more to it than that.

In July, chronic back pain required an operation – my  ninth. Before I was fully recovered, Ann and I went to France to celebrate our fortieth wedding anniversary. Soon after arriving, I had emergency surgery for an intestinal blockage and was hospitalized for a month in Paris and a week or so in New York when I got home. Being sick gets in the way of most things except being sick.

Also, I was slowed by age. Moments of not being able to find the word I was looking for. Naps morphing from optional to required. Diminishing interest in current events. What is Invidia? What is AI? Don’t know. Don’t much care. How the Yankees were playing rose to outsize importance. In the circumstances, finishing the novel was readily postponed.

In additon to the novel, illness, and aging, I had another reason for not writing  Geezerblockead pieces this year; Donald Trump.

The destruction being wrought as he started his second term was dispiriting and absorbing. It was all I wanted to write about. Trouble was, I had nothing to say that others were not already saying. Sure, I could have pointed out that Trump made it OK to be self-centered, that such thinking was destroying the country and its citizens, that there is little or no difference between America first and me first. But those who didn’t already know this would have been unreachable.

Now that I’m getting healthy again and there are signs that Trumpism is not invincible, I’m thinking I’ll make a new effort to produce some Ruminations. The novel can wait.