Thinking Of The Future

Please join me for (unsurprisingly), yet another pause in the semi-ongoing IOU Series… 

It’s a Sunday, and I hope y’all have a hot coffee (or beverage of your choice) and something tasty to eat while you put your feet up to read all of the excellent blogs in this community.

Since you’re here on our page (and once again, our sincere THANKS for Reading!), I thought I’d share some (possibly) morbid thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head, of late. Won’t that be FUN!

* NB: I was playing Radiohead’s Kid A while I wrote this post. It turned out to be perfectly fitting.

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Ol’ angry ass Hank says do NOT touch the records.

Honestly, I’ve been thinking about aging, about mortality. Mid-life crisis? I doubt it. I haven’t suddenly felt a need to get a flash car and a young blonde girlfriend… sounds like more hassle than it’s worth, to me…

But it does feel like it was about ten minutes ago that I was 18 and the whole world was before me…

…and now here I am, at 42, in (seemingly) the blink of an eye. Will it seem to be only another blink before I’m 85? I mean, my own son will be 50 when I get to that age…

Funny thing is, I don’t feel any different than I did when I was 18. Back then, I played basketball 7 days a week, often more than once a day, so I had just as much trouble creaking and moaning my way out of bed in the mornings then as I do now… it’s just that back then my legs would protest before warming up and being fine again, and now my legs are quite damaged from all that basketball back then, so their aching protest lasts a lot longer into the day…

I suppose I eat less now than I did then, when I had the metabolism of three people and could eat everything that wasn’t nailed down (and I generally did) without gaining a pound. Actually, I’d like to see those days return… Long story short, I’m generally a fairly energetic guy, and I give ‘er every chance I get. The Governor Of Givin’ ‘Er, as the mighty Boppin once put it. Go go go!

Anyway, back to aging. I no longer have any of my grandparents still living, though I knew them all and have fond memories of all of them. I attended 50th wedding anniversary parties for both couples, too. My own parents will reach 50 years married two years from now, in 2019. My lovely wife and I will hit that milestone in 2053, when we’re 79 years old. Even on my street, several of our neighbours are in their 80s. One, in particular, is 85 and has had severe health issues in the last while, even beginning chemo this week…

Truthfully, I don’t necessarily dread aging. Age is fine (just ask a good wine!), so long as good health continues. I like to think I’ve been suffused with enough vitality to see me into old age with at least a little bit of piss and vinegar still boiling in me. But it does all get you thinking, doesn’t it?

Well, I’m not gonna talk about worries such as money for the future. Quite simply, all the baby boomers are gonna suck all of that dry on us long before we get to the fumes of what’s left, so we’re royally fucked unless we help ourselves NOW. And I’m not gonna dwell on potential future health issues (given my family history, it will likely be a heart attack that kills me, oh joy). No, this is a music blog, so I’m gonna focus on that.

Those of us with large collections of music will, no doubt, have wondered the same thing I have, recently, which is what will happen to all of these wonderful records if/when I need to move into a care home? We moved my grandma into a place before she passed (she could honestly not live on her own without care any longer), and she was given one small bedroom. If I had to take all of my records into that place, there’d be no room for furniture. I’d have to crash on the couch in the common room.

But seriously, it’s all well and good to hope that you’ll be able to stay in your own place until you die in your sleep of old age, but as so many people find out, that’s not necessarily a reality.

So what do you do with your collection? The instinct is, of course, to keep it all somehow… Do you digitize them all and take a laptop with a big external hard drive along, selling all of your records? Do you give them all to your kids and hope they don’t sell them off on you? Do you try, in some way, to pare them way down to some manageable level, and hope that some other resident’s asshat grandkid doesn’t nick them from your room for meth money?

In Sum:

Sorry folks, I don’t have any answers for you on this one, as I’ve only just been pondering it all recently myself. But I know it’ll only be another blink of an eye before we’re facing some of these very real, late-life quandries ourselves. I’ve just been thinking that perhaps we’re best to start considering the possibilities and ramifications now. These collections matter. They deserve justice and care!

If you’ve got suggestions for future collection planning, drop a comment. I’d love to hear it!