21-JAN-2025, Port Townsend, WA – About 35 years ago, I read a piece by Calvin Trillin. He was writing with some bemusement about people he’d meet or who would write to him to ask about his daughters. He’d written about getting bagels for them on weekend mornings and the life of an urban family with two young daughters.
He wrote about how this is what people remembered about him. He was pleased they’d shown such interest, remembered the story, and cared about him and his children. He’d tell them the children were fine, they were in their thirties then, thirty-five years ago when I read him.†
At the same time, The New Yorker hired a writer who I loved, Adam Gopnik. I couldn’t get enough of his writing and his point of view. He was the next generation of writers who were slowly replacing writers who had written for The New Yorker, sometimes, since its inception. They were also people I liked and read, who spoke with great expertise and a long view of the world, who I had been reading for twenty years. Gopnik was almost exactly my age, and lived in NYC.
A few years later he moved to Paris, where I would live each summer. I planned to find him and meet. I had the contacts to do so, but I was in a troubled relationship, writing the next version of the software product that supported both me and my employees, and never got around to looking for him.
The years passed and I watched some documentary about a smart-mouthed Ny’er complaining that the city wasn’t what it was when she moved there, fifty years ago*. Gopnik was there speaking with the documentary producer on a stage. He was well-spoken, funny, and in his sixties, like me. I was surprised, and then chagrined. He’d had an entire career as a writer and now it was starting to wind up.
I hadn’t thought of myself in that position, but it is starting… no, I’m deeply in it. I left software development 12 years ago… well, I wrote my last code 12 years ago. The nature of coding has changed so much that I couldn’t code commercially. I don’t know anyone in the field, really. And I couldn’t write anything close to the AI products that are out there.
In sailing, I can hold my own very well. I know more than most people I meet and have sailed more than most. I’m aged to some and the young people I meet, yes, the sport is becoming young again, need to be convinced I know anything at all.††
When they speak, I could butt in and give my advice or tell stories winning their respect, but I don’t anymore. They talk, I listen, and then I go off with Jennifer and do things.
I think it is because I have been away and the wall between me and the current world is getting thicker. Perhaps, because I don’t care, perhaps because I have other things to keep my attention. Perhaps because I have stopped caring about anyone else’s approval.
I spent a lot of my life not caring what people thought, which was a lie. I cared terribly, but generally did what I pleased – when I did otherwise things didn’t work out.
Now, I find I don’t. I work on my boat because I want to, I don’t work on my cars because I don’t want to and we sail where Jennifer wants to go. I think it is because I read 40 or more first-person cruising books, and fifty or more biographies that I don’t care anymore.
I read a lot… genres where I am always looking for fresh innovative work, I watch videos… I was always shamed-faced about that because I have an addiction, but there is a lot I never saw. We’ll leave for a month in mid-March, come home for a couple of doctors’ appointments (checkups only), and then move aboard for six months.
I don’t pay much attention to my investments. I have someone to take care of the important money and I fool around with the rest, investing mostly in people I know. It’s money I can lose.
I have many people I knew when they were young that I wanted to see when they were in their thirties, when they were their most attractive, but I forgot and now they’re all my age. I don’t think I’d find them interesting. I doubt they’d care about me either. But… may be…
Life is a muddle. I care less about what people think and less about the world. I’m winding down. I’m pretty much where I want to be. I help people I care for. They are people I care for. They are not people most people see me being friends with, in some cases, they’re shocked. I invite the different people, the mainstream and the people I care for, to the same events. After a bit of shock, they get along fine.
I’m making cheddar cheese today. The first batch, two months ago, didn’t come out as expected, but I won’t know for sure for another month. This one looks pretty good, we’ll see. It is all rotting milk.
*Ten years before I moved there.
†At this writing, he’s still alive in his middle 90s.
††This isn’t limited to sailing. On my last trip to Europe, I had three different young people come to my seat to explain clearing customs to me.
