Self-Censorship

May 30, 2026 — Pat Bertram

You’d think that someone who says she writes for herself would write whatever she wants, and that would be true if I saved the writing for myself alone as I did with the journal I kept after Jeff died. Once a piece is written, however, and I go to post it, things change. Suddenly, it’s not just for me but for anyone who wants to take a peek into my life and thoughts and emotions.

For example, I tend to stay away from anything controversial, and if by chance I happen to mention something that could be construed as political, I edit it out because it’s just not worth the backlash. So perhaps it’s not self-censorship so much as it is simply editing to make a more universally accepted piece. Or do I mean peace?

Either way, I do sometimes second guess what I write, not just when it involves world affairs, but also when it involves people in my life, especially if I know they read this blog. In fact, I’m sitting here right now debating about whether or not I should mention something that recently happened. (Apparently, I decided to go ahead with the article, because here I am.)

A few days ago, I accompanied a friend to an appointment. I’ve driven with her hundreds of miles over the years, so I’m familiar with her driving, and I’ve never been concerned about safety, but that day, she was driving erratically, swerving from lane to lane, cutting in front of cars she apparently couldn’t see, seemed to have no depth perception, had a hard time hearing, could barely handle the steering wheel. Bizarrely, she had no idea what she was doing. To her, all was fine, she was just tired after a sleepless night. In fact, when I later mentioned that it would have been better to have cancelled the appointment, she said she had no idea there was any need.

I wondered if she’d been having a mini stroke, so when she next went to the doctor, I urged her to tell him the story. She did. What she discovered is that all out-of-whackness was caused her insomnia the previous night.

That is why this story is important and why, even though I worry my friend might think my writing this might be a betrayal, I ignored my inclination for self-censorship and posted it anyway. If you have a sleepless night, especially if you are getting up in years, please stay home even if you feel fine. Truly, the symptoms she showed were traumatic and life-threatening (for me too) and are common side effects of a sleepless night. It makes me wonder how many people are going about their lives as if everything is fine, when in fact, it isn’t.

I’m lucky in that I don’t worry about not sleeping. If I have a rare sleepless night, I just stay home the next day. And if I ever can’t because of an appointment, I hope I am as smart as I am urging you to be and cancel the appointment.

It’s funny how small things can have such devastating effects. We never think of a sleepless night as being life threatening in the short run, but it is or it can be.

So be careful. Please. And don’t drive if you’ve had a sleepless night.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in blogging, dealing with old age, history/myth, life. Tags: , , , , . 12 Comments »

Dealing With Life

May 18, 2026 — Pat Bertram

It seems as if I’ve been doing a lot of blogging lately about my ideal life, though sometimes it was only because those blog prompts came up and I felt as if I had something to say. Other times it was because that particular day did feel ideal. It’s made me wonder, though, if I sounded smug with all that “ideal life” talk. For those of you who have been with me all through my years of grief over Jeff, over the loss of my father and my older brother, the loss of whatever stability I’d found, you know that my current ideal life has been hard won. The posts are more about gratitude for finding a safe haven than about congratulating myself on winning the “life” lottery.

I also know, as do you, how quickly life can change. One day one is the midst of the most terrible angst imaginable, and the next day one is okay. Well, not the next day, though from my perspective today, it can feel like it. But I have thousands of blog posts archived under the heading “grief posts” to show the truth of how many days separated the days of angst from these days of peace.

These “ideal life” posts are strictly about today. I hope no matter what traumas descend on me in the future, these days of gratitude and peace will help give me the courage to face what might come. I can hope, of course, for many years of this “ideal life,” but life tends not to take our hopes into consideration. Though who knows — some people believe we create our own reality, so perhaps these “ideal life” posts are helping create a future that is as easy as my life is today.

It is funny, though, that I am going through a time of relative freedom from body malfunctions and pain. There have been episodes over the past few years of knee problems, piriformis muscle and tendon issues, and various other trivialities (considering the life/death spectrum). I’ve managed to find a way to handle whatever has come my way, and currently there is a weird bout of catarrh that comes and goes, probably due to allergies, but for the most part, there are no malfunctions for me to deal with. That will change, too, but again, I am grateful for these days of ease (as opposed to dis-ease). And in fact, they should be celebrated despite any hint of what could be conceived as smugness.

Do I “deserve” these days? Who knows. Does anyone “deserve” anything that happens to them? Life is just . . . life. We deal with the good as well as the bad, though to be honest, the good is a whole heck of a lot easier to deal with!

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in blogging, dealing with old age, home, life. Tags: , , , . 4 Comments »

Learning Something New

May 17, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
How do you stay motivated when learning something new?
View all responses

This must be a question for people who are forced to learn things they don’t want to, such as for school or work or new technology, because otherwise it makes no sense. At least not for me. Learning something new has always been its own motivation. Now that I think about it, learning something new seems as if it is sort of the point of life. If we never learn anything new, where would we be? Lolling around in oversized cribs, I imagine, crying from sheer boredom.

The joy of learning is written in our genes. That’s obvious if you’ve ever watched babies, newly sprung from their playpens, crawling all over, learning new things, trying to pull themselves up. And oh, that grin of sheer pride and joy when they manage that first step. They didn’t need to stay motivated, the learning itself was the goal, though encouragement from their parents never hurt. Obviously, there are some things babies need to learn that perhaps they don’t want to, such as using the potty or not touching the pretty fire, but for the most part, babies learn because they want to. Because to them, learning is playing, and playing is learning.

There is an old quote: we don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing. I never liked that quote because it’s too specious, too simplistic, too out of touch with reality. Look at professional athletes. They have to stop playing because they get too old to be able to compete with younger players, not the other way around.

Now, if I were to substitute “learning” for playing, then that quote makes sense, though again, it doesn’t always hold true. Often the elderly can no longer learn because of growing cognitive issues, but still, I tend to think curiosity (and boredom) does motivate people of any age to learn new things. Besides, whether we want to or not, we have to continue learning as we age if only to learn how to do things we once did with ease but that now seem complicated, like opening jars or bending to pick something up. For sure we have to learn how to be mindful or else a reckless step can lead to disaster.

Since writing this has convinced me of the importance of learning — with or without a need for motivation — I’m sitting here trying to think what I’ve recently learned, but I can’t really think of anything. At least nothing fun. I learned a lot of fun things in the past decade — dancing, camping, buying a house, taking care of a house, the tarot, landscaping, gardening — but not so much today except for small things I learn while reading or gardening or doing puzzles. The only specific thing I can think of is that I am learning more of the history of the middle east than I ever cared to know. I never did understand anything of their history or who they were or why they did what they did — it was simply too confusing, uninteresting, and of no particular value to my life, but now I’m seeing a much broader picture, one that dates back almost to the first days of civilization, but specifically back to the 7th century. Is it important to know the history? Only if I want to know the historical reasons for a lot of today’s events, which I don’t, not really. But it is learning, so that’s good.

What I need is to find something new to learn. Something I want to learn just for the fun of learning, something I don’t have to worry about motivating myself to learn. Though what that might be, I don’t know, because if I did know, I’d already be learning it.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in blogging, dealing with old age, history/myth, life. Tags: , , , , , . 2 Comments »

My Ideal Life

May 9, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
If you had to describe your ideal life, what would it look like?
View all responses

If I had to describe my ideal life today, it would actually look like my life today, but that description has changed over the years.

If I had to describe my ideal life when I was a child, it would have been no chores and time to read all I wanted. And dessert after every meal.

If I had to describe my ideal life when I was a young adult, it would probably have been a job I loved that paid me a ton of money so that I could save enough to quit my job and read all I want. And yes, dessert after dinner.

In my middle years, my ideal life would have been how things were when Jeff was doing well — playing games together, working together, and making enough to get by. Ideally, we would have made enough not to have had to worry about neither of us working when he wasn’t doing well. Still, during those intervals, I had plenty of time to read, though not always money for dessert every evening.

Now, that I have grown up (actually more than grown up — I’ve almost grown to the stage of spoilage), and now that I have realigned my life after losing Jeff, my parents and my older brother, I can’t imagine any life other than the one I have. And rightly so. For me, it’s . . . ideal. Truly.

For example, this morning, after my stretching exercises, I went outside and mowed the lawn. I talked to one neighbor who crossed the street to chat, saw another neighbor out walking, and she stopped to chat. I watered the petunias I’d purchased yesterday morning and planted yesterday afternoon, then wandered around my yard, marveling at being able to live in such a fairytale environment.

Admittedly, the yard does take work, but right now, it’s easy enough to make the effort. Besides, the work I did today wasn’t work so much as an excuse to be outside in the clement weather, especially after the past two days of inclement weather.

Although I have time to read, I’ve run out of books I want to read, have no interest in scouring the shelves of the local library for more books I have no interest in reading, so I’ve been rereading the few books in my own library. And that dessert after every meal? I could have it of course, but then there’s the issue of my being smart enough not to indulge. But those “ideals” were left over from my childhood, so doing without isn’t an issue. Other things take their place. Blogging. Solving pencil puzzles. Painting by number. Gardening. Sometimes even visits with friends, whether impromptu or planned.

Best of all, I know that this is an ideal life. Since I’m in the aforementioned state of spoilage, I have no idea how long this particular phase of my life will last, though I tend to think that whatever happens, since I’m in the habit of being grateful for whatever life I have, I’ll find that an ideal life, too. Eventually, anyway. And if not, well, that life is in the future, and the future is up for grabs.

But I do know what today is like since I’m living it, and for me, it is the ideal life.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, blogging, dealing with old age, gardening, life. Tags: , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Decision Fatigue Redux

April 27, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Here’s irony for you. Yesterday I wrote about decision fatigue and counted myself lucky that I have so few decisions to make. Today, I’m sitting here at the computer, staring at a pretend piece of blank paper, sorting through a multitude of options, trying to decide what I want to write about. And it is making me so very fatigued!

So much is going on out there in the real world that I could talk about, maybe even should talk about — not so much what is happening, but my reactions to the reactions of what is happening. Are people really so unhinged nowadays they bemoan that an assassination attempt failed, while others demand that next time they find better shooters, and still others scream “staged”? And are so many as blasé as they seem, that such behavior (both the attempt and the aftermath) is so expected, that it’s simply ho-hum?

None of this behavior is anything I want to deal with. It certainly makes me determined to take better care of myself. Many of the people teetering on the edge (and some that have flat-out fallen on the side of derangement) are in the age group and even the profession, that will be the caretakers of my generation. Crikey, I so do not want to have to deal them now — I can’t imagine being dependent on such people in my feeble old age. Luckily, unbalanced and heartless folk seem to be a minority (at least, I hope they are). Even luckier (if it can be called luck) my limited finances won’t support such care, which again comes down to my taking better care of myself.

After all my waffling about what to write about, I made my decision. There’s nothing I can do about anything that’s going on and nothing I write is going to make any difference, so I’m going to shut down my computer, turn off the outside world, tune into my own world, do the best I can for myself, and make this a peaceful day.

Wishing the same for you.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, blogging, dealing with old age, internet, life, writing. Tags: , , , , . 3 Comments »

Decision Fatigue

April 26, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I just read an article claiming that people living alone suffer greatly from “decision fatigue.” Apparently, there are 35,000 decisions each person makes every day, and though that number seems to be accepted, no one knows how that number came to be established.

A lot of those “decisions” sound like habit to me. To hit the snooze alarm or get out of bed immediately. To take a morning shower or to brush one’s teeth. To drink one or more cups of coffee. To drive to work or take the bus. All things people do by rote.

Some decisions, such as what to wear, are also by rote, because whether they know it or not, people tend to wear uniforms, such as business attire when going to work or jeans and a top when staying home.

Most of my decisions lie in the category of habit, which is why I blog every day — I don’t need to make a decision about whether to post something. I just do it. I sometimes need to make a decision about what to write, but I generally just go with whatever flows. (Unfortunately for you, it adds another decision to your list — read or not read.) Nor do I have a lot of decisions to make when it comes to food. My meals are simple and getting simpler all the time because of food concerns and a growing aversion to cooking complicated (and not so complicated) dishes.

I am on a watering and yard maintenance schedule, which also removes the need to make decisions. When I see something in passing that needs done, I do it immediately, which saves on having to make a decision later. Of those hypothetical 35,000 decisions that people make every day, I consciously make a dozen. Maybe less. Even the decisions I do make, such as whether to play a game or read are instinctual. When I get bored reading, I play. When I get bored playing, I read.

I tend to think this is the same with a lot of retired people. Working life, of course, would heap decisions on people, decisions they would probably not want to make but have to, but the article wasn’t about the difference in decision fatigue between working people vs. retirees. It was about how people living alone are more at risk for decision fatigue.

The article postulated that those who live alone have to make all the decisions in the household. One example the writer gave was coming home from work. If you live alone, you have to decide what to eat, as well as make all the decisions that come with meal preparation. If you live with someone, that person might have a meal ready or could help decide what to fix and when to fix. That’s when the claims in that article fell apart for me. I couldn’t help but think of all the single parents who come home from work, have to cook dinner, have to take care of the kids, have to do all sorts of things and make all sorts of decisions that people living alone don’t do. Sometimes, if it’s a two-parent household, one person does have a meal prepared, but that isn’t always the case. And sometimes one, or even both, have many more decisions to make than single people because more people in the household means more people to make decisions about. Making those decisions also takes way more time and energy because of all the needed discussion.

Luckily for me, I live a simple life. Most of my major decisions, such as where to live, have been made. And since I live alone, if I don’t want to make a decision, I don’t. There is that old saying, “not to decide is to decide,” but for sure, not deciding takes a lot less energy, especially for someone like me who generally doesn’t care whatever way a decision might go. Of course, not caring about the result of a decision leads to other issues, such as inability to do anything that requires a decision to be made because it’s almost impossible to decide between two equal situations.

Still, that’s something to worry about another day. Or not.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in being me, blogging, dealing with old age, life. Tags: , , , , , . 3 Comments »

What Makes Me Nervous

April 24, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What makes you nervous?
View all responses

Appliances make me nervous. Not operating them. Not even so much the thought of their breaking down. But what comes after when they do malfunction.

I try not to worry, and mostly it’s easy. I just turn my thoughts in another direction. But when a particular appliance makes an unfamiliar noise or what sounds like it could be a vibration, then I go on alert.

My washing machine needs new rods or new bearings because unless the load is small and perfectly balanced, sometime during one of the final spins, it shakes and rattles so hard that it makes me very nervous. I’ll get a new machine soon because there’s no one around here that I know of who fixes washing machines (the one repair service in the next town over has never returned my calls). That’s what really worries me — having to deal with a machine that suddenly stops working with my wet apparel locked inside. Even worse is the thought of having to deal with all that buying a new washing machine entails, and all the decisions that have to be made until everything is settled down once again.

In rereading what I wrote above, I noticed that I used the words “worry” and “nervous” interchangeably, so I checked online to see what the difference is. Apparently, worry is long term, is mostly in the mind, and often centers on specific future scenarios. Nervousness is short term, primarily physical, and often centers on an immediate or unfamiliar situation.

So I suppose what it comes down to in my appliance scenario is that I am worried about being nervous about dealing with breakdown issues.

What does unequivocally make me nervous are appointments. I don’t care how important or trivial those appointments might be, I always find myself getting nervous. I suppose the nervousness comes not just from worrying about a perhaps negative outcome of the appointment, such as a dental visit or a DMV appointment to get my license renewed, but it’s also because of someone else being in control of the situation. I am lucky to be pretty much in control of my life. Admittedly, I have a self-restricted life — I don’t go out much, don’t party or “have fun” (whatever that is). I do simply things, try to be mindful of dangers that come with letting my thoughts wander, and generally take as good a care as possible of myself and my house and property. I am pretty much in control, barring accidents and appliances breaking down, so it makes sense that I’m nervous when I have to deal with an appointment where suddenly, I am not in control. Someone else temporarily gets to have a say in my life. So far, those “say”s have worked out, but that’s not always the case.

Oddly, the one appointment that did have a negative impact wasn’t even my appointment, but a friend’s. I’d accompanied her to the eye doctor, and while waiting for her, a woman sat next to me and began to chat with me. That wasn’t too much of a problem until she started coughing. Then she admitted she’d just come from her medical doctor and had been diagnosed with bronchitis, but that she wasn’t infectious anymore.

I moved away from her, of course, but it was too late. I’m still dealing with the lingering result of her uninfectious bronchitis.

It might seem as if my life is fraught with worry and nervousness, but the truth is, I am almost always focused on the moment, which brings, if not serenity, at least calm and a modicum of contentment.

Wishing the same for you!

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

Posted in being me, dealing with old age, home, life. Tags: , , , , , . 4 Comments »

Risky Behavior

April 21, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
When is the last time you took a risk? How did it work out?
View all responses

The risks I take nowadays are nothing I would have considered risky in my younger days. The most dangerous risk I took recently occurred a few months ago when I climbed a ladder to replace my smoke alarm batteries. The risks of such a venture for older folk are real. If you fall when you’re young, you get up, brush yourself off, and continue as if nothing happened. If you fall when you’re old, it could change your life since breaking a hip or some other body part makes living alone problematic.

Luckily, I managed to change the batteries without mishap. Will I try to change the batteries again? I don’t know. Most people I know who would help are as old as I am or even older, and those I know who can still climb ladders are people I’m uneasy about having in my house. I’m not scheduled to change the batteries again for a few months, so maybe I’ll meet someone young enough or tall enough who will do it for me.

Other risky behavior is not something I can avoid by having someone else do it. Getting out of bed in the morning, for example. Sounds silly, doesn’t it? But the truth is, many older people stand up too quickly, get dizzy, and end up falling. Or they are awakened by their alarm clock, get disoriented, and get up without pausing to orient themselves. Such silly things to be so dangerous! I’ve gotten in the habit of sitting on the side of the bed for a minute before rising, which does mitigate the danger, but still, it’s a very real risk.

Even sillier, though perhaps not as dangerous, is staying in bed. Gravity works to pull joints out of whack, loosens ligaments, and does other nefarious things. I never had problems with my knees until I got up one day a few years ago and could barely walk. It took months of rest, ice, heat, and the proper exercises to get me walking again. I’m still not back to where I was. Even though I’m careful when I’m awake and careful about how I position myself in bed, I can’t control what happens when I am asleep.

I’m not even going to get into the whole shower thing, which is perhaps the most dangerous activity people can do. I’ve minimized the risk with a step-in shower and railings, which help. And so will the bath chair I can see in my future.

I suppose working in my garden could be classified as a risk because the last couple of times I’ve fallen have been when I was outside working. Somehow, garden work doesn’t seem to be as dangerous as the risky behavior listed above, but being outside, especially when I’m concentrating on something other than where I place my feet, has its perils.

Life sure does narrow when one gets older! Still, we all take risks anyway because there’s no other choice. The best we can do is to be careful and to pay attention to what we are doing.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

Posted in Adventure, dealing with old age, gardening, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 7 Comments »

Cross Country Risks

April 20, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Yesterday I wrote about my cross-country trip. As important as that journey was to me, I’ll ever do anything like that again, not just because my car and I are ten years older, but because risks I took back then could now land me in jail. Well, one particular risk could.

When Jeff and I traveled together and stopped at a truck stop to fill the car and unfill us, we found the difference in the use of male and female restrooms to be staggering. In a lot of cases, both had a single stall, which didn’t take in the reality that women needed longer in the little room. Or perhaps there were more women needing them. Whatever the reason, there were always long lines of women waiting their turn and generally no men. So one day, Jeff suggested I use the men’s room while he stood guard. I was in and out quickly, and despite my nervousness at having done something wrong, it all worked out. The women I passed on my way out, looked at me, looked at each other, looked at the men’s restroom, and suddenly there were two lines of women waiting for both restrooms.

When I traveled alone after he was gone, I continued to sail past long lines of women if there were no men waiting, and head directly to the men’s room. I figured that even if someone noticed, they would prefer my misuse of the restrooms to a puddle on the floor for them to clean up.

There was only one time that I met a man as I was coming out of the room, so I looked back at the designation on the door, shrugged sheepishly, and said, “Sorry.” (Occasionally, it truly was a mistake. When people got too cute about the male and female signs, sometimes it was hard to figure out which was which.)

What once could have gotten me a nasty look now could get me arrested.

When the debate about who can use what restroom started, I thought about those single side-by-side rooms and wondered why men would want to use the women’s restroom. Obviously, they never traveled much because who would want to wait in a long line of jittering women desperate to go when there was a perfectly usable room right next door. (Besides, the solution in those cases was easy — change the signs so that anyone could use either.) Admittedly, there were often several stalls in some restrooms, but there weren’t long lines at those stops, so it wasn’t an issue for me, though I can see where it would be an issue for others. New laws in some states now demand you use the restroom that matches your biological gender, and of all the risks I imagined while traveling, I’d never once considered having to stand before a judge and admit guilty to an overfull bladder.

Hmmm. Do I really want to post this? It’s not something I’ve ever talked about with anyone, and in fact, it’s a bit embarrassing, but what the heck. It’s not the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever posted, or the worst thing I’ve ever admitted, but at least the picture of my garden is pretty.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

Posted in Adventure, being me, dealing with old age, life. Tags: , , , . 8 Comments »

In Ten Years

April 13, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
View all responses

Where do I see myself in ten years? Alive. I hope.

My mother died at the age I will be in ten years, as did her mother, which makes me wonder if that’s an age written in my genes. My father’s family was long-lived, so that might be a mitigating factor, but I take after my mother more than I do him, so we’ll see. Of course, life might have other plans for me, so that ten years might not be a given. Still, I have what I always have . . . today.

Oddly, we don’t seem to be able to project the view of ourselves into an aged, weakened state, so the way I truly see myself in ten years is mostly the way I am today: knees that don’t always cooperate as well as they did when I was younger, foods that don’t always agree with me, but for the most part, my body works well. My mind, too, works well (at least as well as anyone can judge their own mental workings).

I see myself still living alone, still working in my garden, still grateful for my house, and still grateful for my life.

I can only hope that I really will be as I see that self. I’m to the age where the body doesn’t recuperate as well as it once did, and so minor ills will tend to add up to an eventual fragility, but I can’t “see” that. I suppose it’s a good thing we can’t even imagine what we will feel like and what we will be like when we are very old — it would make life feel . . . frantic, maybe, as we try to fit in everything we want to do before that decline. Or perhaps it would make life feel defeating as we try to overcome thoughts of our end.

So, unless there’s a blog prompt asking me where I see myself in ten years, the overriding factor is that I can’t see myself that far in the future. I don’t even bother to try.

I’m just glad I can see myself here today.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

Posted in being me, dealing with old age, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , . 15 Comments »
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