Getting there is all the fun

Volume 1: The early years 1948-1966
Volume 2: College, Army, first jobs 1966-1977

Volume 3: PC Revolutionary: Computerland, Beehive, Novell 1977-1989
Volume 4: Beginning The Great Panic: Divorce, bankruptcy, mid-life crisis 1990-1993

Volume 5: Being a Sea Cucumber 1994-1997
Volume 6: Searching for a new life, 1997-2002 (and discovering how deep the Panic Scars are)

Volume 7: Recovering from Panic Thinking 2003-2008

Volume 8: Remaking a home in the USA 2008-2010
Volume 9: Searching for positive feedback 2011-2014

Volume 10: Furnishing my Comfort Zone 2015-

Furnishing my Comfort Zone
2015-

Building the Zone

When you are a young adult, it takes only about 40% of your body's capability to get day-to-day things accomplished. This is why burning the candle at both ends comes so easily for young adults. As you get to be an old person the percentage steadily rises. When you get unhealthy it rises even faster. When it gets into the 70%+ range, what you can do with your life gets sharply limited. Given my age and health, the Comfort Zone I've been able to assemble over the last couple years has truly been a blessing.

My daily life is now a routine one, but it is a routine I enjoy. This is what I do:

o I first wake up about 6AM, turn on my main computer, indulge in an early morning snack, and read up on the early morning news, email, and Facebook. That done, in thirty minutes to an hour, I head back to bed and get in some serious snoozing. These days this old body of mine sleeps best after the sun rises. I'm an afternoon person.

o I wake up again about 9/10AM and head for the computer again. There is usually a lot more to look at. That done, I shower, dress and head out for lunch and some outside-my-room reading. I eat out so I get in some morning walking and driving. I eat at various restaurants so my diet stays varied. (I eat out for lunch because it is a lot cheaper than dinner.) Stomach full, I head for the apartment club house or the SLCC Student Center and do some magazine reading there. At the club house I mix reading with solitaire and at the student center I watch the people coming and going.

o That done, I head back to my room for some afternoon writing and web browsing searching news and current events sites. After I do a final check on the Wall Street Journal site I switch to Youtube and watch some videos of songs I like from the 1960's and 70's. The writing can be article writing, book writing, or polishing up my screen plays. I also mix in some computer gaming playing Fallout: New Vegas. These days I'm not exploring much in this, just repeating the scenarios I know I like.

o If I have a class at SLCC, I mix that in as well. I like learning about what is being taught these days in various subjects. I apply what I learn to my future forecasting essays.

o I also try to catch an early movie once a week. For some reason going to the theater and watching one enlivens my walking for a while. The challenge here is finding movies I want to watch -- when you watch as many as I do, they get monotonous. Added bonus: When I see one I like I write up a Technofiction review.

o Some evenings I have an evening activity and I head out for that.

o Most evenings I check out the on-line news once more, in particular the business news. I pay attention to my investing these days so I'm looking for clues and trends. I also make another round on my Facebook accounts. I mix in some more reading, and homework when I'm taking a class.

o Some time after 9PM I have my dinner (which is cereal and milk, it evolved from eating an earlier and earlier breakfast) and shortly after that I hit the hay.

And that's my daily routine these days.

What has kept me most out-of-house busy is attending classes at SLCC -- I'm at one or two each semester. I have also been doing a weekly canasta card session at the apartment club house, bi-weekly reviews of scripts at a local script-writing club, and I have been to a few local book signings.

New Books

In 2015 and 2016 I finished two books Visions of 2050 and Profit From History. Visions of 2050 is my mix of forecasting and science fiction story-telling that covers changes I see happening in our lifestyles forty years from now. The central theme of this book is cyber muses -- artifical intelligences designed specifically to inspire people to greater accomplishments. Profit from History is about the patterns I see in history and how these can be used for predicting how current events will evolve. An example of this is when a Time of Nutcases is in progress -- as it is in the mid-2010's.

Sadly, the stock market burped at the end of summer. This matters because I consider spending on my books to be a treat, because none are profitable. This means I wait until my stocks pass milestones before I indulge in the expensive parts of the publishing, such as the promoting side. Sadly, the burp this time has been running a year long now, so promoting has been delayed -- patience... patience.

In 2017 I got to talk about these new books at the Life, The Universe and Everything science fiction writer symposium. I was on six panels there. (here is what I talked about)

I don't think I've mentioned it elsewhere so I'll point it out here: I've written two articles in Wikipedia and helped on a third. The one I helped on was the article on Aunt Peggy -- Margaret Bourke White. The two I started were Space Travel Using Constant Acceleration and a biography of my father Roger Bourke White.

2018 -- Milestone Reached

On February 26th, 2018 I reached a significant milestone: my investments passed one million dollars in value. Yay! It turned out it was just for one day in February, and a few days in March, then the market contracted and seven figures didn't become long lasting until months later. But yay! I could stretch and say to myself "I'm a millionaire." and this was just twenty one years after the second no asset bankruptcy in 1997 caused by the marriage and divorce fiscal fiasco of the late 1980's. More yay!

My birthday was the high point. I reached 70 and I reached it as a millionaire. This time I had been one for several weeks in a row. It was sticking this time. Now both millionaire and 70th birthday had been reached at the same time. It was a neat feeling indeed! June 2nd was a fine, fine day in 2018.

This particular milestone wasn't on my bucket list. The bucket list item was one million dollars in 1966 dollars, about eight million in 2018 dollars. But, I made it to a million, and I was on my way. If the value growing continued at the same pace, making the bucket list would be about six to eight years away.

And, just a week later, I finished Visions of 2051, 2nd in the series, and sent it off to Author House to be published. June was a feel-good month in 2018.

Oh... and in February I presented at LTUE again. (here are the topics)

Hitting 80% Capacity

I've hit that point where it takes about 80% of my physical capabilities to accomplish my daily living tasks. In other words, it is all I can do just to keep up with day-to-day living efforts. In my young adulthood it took about 40%. That left lots of energy available for party-heartying and trying to accomplish lots of new and interesting things. Yeah!

As we grow older that daily effort percentage increases, that's one of the big differences between being young and being old. (another is wisdom) So these days I'm happy when I'm just getting along and life goes smoothly without lots of surprises. And this is why writing is so important to me these days. It's an activity that doesn't take a lot of physical effort so I can keep at it.

The big challenge is that without experiencing lots of new and interesting things, there aren't lots of new and interesting topics for me to write about. Thinking up new and interesting is the big writing challenge these days.

-- The End --

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