Alex Carrick’s Blog

This story doesn’t need much preamble. Besides, I like to keep my writing short these days. Maybe it’s a by-product of growing crankier.

From a man’s point of view, the following are advance indicators that you may be approaching the “senior” years.

(1) You read episode summaries of your favorite TV shows on the Internet so you won’t have to watch them. Better to snooze on the couch to the nice background noise.

(2) You can remember a time without television, which wasn’t so different from now since, without help and some combination of three “remotes”, you can’t get your current high-tech monstrosity to work properly.

(3) Half of your conversation with family and friends concerns your aches and pains. Sadly, that’s also when you’re most coherent.

(4) You go skating with family and friends and the only thing you can think about as you round the rink is, “What’s that tingling in my arms and legs? Am I blacking out?”

(5) You need to attach wheels to your daily pill dispenser to move it from here to there.

(6) Your sweater collection is bigger than your tie collection by a factor of ten and eclipses your wife’s shoe collection.

(7) Your eyeballs physically hurt as you read and you’re certain nobody else speaks loudly enough.

(8) You hate indoor parking lots where the directions are incomprehensible, laneways funnel in and the columns leap out at you.

(9) The kids in school are studying your teenage era as ancient history.

(10) You realize that two times your lifespan ago, fire was first harnessed. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. Columbus discovered America.

(11) The face looking back at you in the mirror is the same as in your youth except for the Mariana trench wrinkles, the cocker spaniel jowls and the Mr. Clean hairline.

(12) You search around in your brain for a word, a phrase, a title or a name and the only thing that’s up there is a working-to-rule librarian.

(13) You use the word “cusp” to describe a process that began a very long time ago.

****

My helpful how-to-know series also includes How to Know When You’ve Become a Certain Kind of Writer (wink wink).

**

For my first book, “Two Scoops” Is Just Right, please click here for the paperback version and here for the Kindle e-book version.

For the sequel, “Three Scoops” Is A Blast! (with the award-winning “Size of the Skip”) click here for paperback and here for Kindle.

For “Four Scoops” Is Over The Top (containing Hemingway short-listed “Caboose Follies”) click here for paperback and here for Kindle.

And finally, for my latest book, “Five Scoops” Is An Addiction!, please click here for the paperback and here for the Kindle digital version.

Also, I would love it if you joined me on Twitter (Alex_Carrick), Facebook and/or LinkedIn.