Aged Thoughts

January 6, 2026 — Pat Bertram

So far this year, I’ve kept up with my resolutions and intentions, as well as inadvertent plans. “Inadvertent plans” meaning those things I’ve been doing without ever actually planning to do them, such as daily blogging.

Of course, this is only the fifth day of the new year, but still — to be keeping up with all I want to do is pretty impressive. At least, it is to me.

What’s funny is how much time everything takes. I knew things took a lot of time, which is why I got lackadaisical about doing them. Blogging, by the time I write, rewrite, edit, add images, figure out tags and actually post the thing takes a couple of hours. Exercise — both the stretching (which includes therapy for my knees) and walking — takes another hour. And cooking, eating, and cleaning up after myself as well as other household chores and personal maintenance takes another hour or two or even three.

Lately it seems as if once I’ve done what I’ve planned, there isn’t a whole lot of time left of the day. Admittedly, I am trying to do more, and the day ends early. Despite the end of the creeping darkness and the gradual returning of the light, sunset comes quickly: today the sun will set at 4:47 pm.

Even taking all that into consideration, the day seems to disappear, which makes me wonder if I am moving slower. Is it possible that one can move slowly without knowing it? It doesn’t seem as if I take a longer time to do the things I’ve often done, and yet, the hours evaporate.

A lot of things change around a person without their being aware of it, such as age. Even in late middle age and early old age, we still feel the same as we always did, and despite occasional twinges and a few wrinkles (well, perhaps more than a few!) we tend to think we still look the same. People used to tell me how young I looked, and yet, I was often given a senior discount without requesting it, which told me that I might look good for my age, but when it comes to comparison with young workers, I must look ancient.

Even if our minds slow, we don’t really notice because we are always at home in our own minds. So perhaps it’s the same with movement. We seem to move with the same level of effort, but the effects of that effort, obviously, change with the years, but when does that change come, and will we know it?

None of this really matters, of course. I do what I can when I can, move at a comfortable pace, and as long as there are enough hours to accomplish what I want to accomplish each day, it’s no one’s business (maybe not even my own) about how much of the day is left to read and relax.

Still, I do wonder how much slower I am moving, and how it will affect me during the coming years. Luckily, I don’t often give in to such aged thoughts, which helps me forget the number of years heaped on my head.

***

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: , , , , , , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Out With the Old, In With the . . .

January 2, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Out with the old, in with the . . . same old, same old.

There isn’t any appreciable difference between December 31 and January 1 except for a new calendar. Of course, we pretend there’s a difference because . . . well, because we think there should be a difference. The only time there was a difference, at least in my life, was when it came to school years, and even then, the difference wasn’t appreciable since the first days of the new school year often duplicated the last of the old one as we reviewed the previous year’s work.

But now, as an adult, nope, there’s not any difference between the old and the apocryphal new. In fact, as far as I remember, I never did anything for the new year until after Jeff died. Then, I wanted to do as much as I could to make my new single life different from my old shared life, so once or twice, I even stayed up to midnight and toasted the new year with a glass of bubbly — sparkling cider, if I remember correctly. I wanted a change of focus, a turning away from the way I wished things were to the way things are and maybe even to the way things were meant to be. And that seemed to help me continue on without the person who’d been the focus of my life for so many decades.

What helped during those grieving years now seems ho hum. I do, sometimes, play around with New Year’s resolutions in an effort to make the new year seem new again, or at least to make myself seem new again, but resolutions don’t really help. It seems to me that making a resolution sets one up for failure. Because if you plan to do something for a year, chances are, you won’t continue when the year ends, and if the resolution is going to end, then why wait until the end of the year? Why not in June, or February, or even today?

Still, I did make one resolution I’d like to keep — to stay away from news and opinions of any kind. (Except for my own opinions, of course.)

There’s another resolution I’m planning to keep for a month — to stay away from sugar and wheat. Neither one of those things is good for me, and both create problems, but both are hard to stay away from permanently — no pizza ever again? I don’t eat it very often, maybe a couple of times a year, but still, even the thought of it can be a treat. And no chocolate? Heaven forbid! But I’m trying to do a body reset, if there is such a thing, and so I’m being careful what I eat.

A third resolution I plan to keep when I can — to walk every day. But that’s not much of a resolution when I allow myself an out from the beginning. I’m to the age where I notice every joint, every muscle, every ligament and tendon, and there’s no telling when I get up in the morning which of those things will be out of whack. When you think about it, that so many people live for many years, especially when they are young, without being reminded of a single body part is the true miracle. To think that all those parts once worked painlessly together is truly astonishing! Adding to the “out” of walking every day is the weather. I have no interest in going out in dangerous weather. (Dangerous to old bones, that is.) But, I’ll do what I can for however many years I can.

A fourth resolution isn’t so much a new year’s resolution, but rather a hope since I can’t do anything until spring. I would like to get my head more into gardening and lawn work than I did last year. Last year I went through the motions but didn’t really care. This year, I’d like to care, especially since a neighbor gave me a gardening record book, and I’d like to thank her by actually using it. Though admittedly, it will be mostly blank until March or even April.

And there’s a fifth resolution. Well, not actually a resolution, something that just happened. So far, I’ve blogged every day this year. Whoop-de-do! Two whole days! Sometimes I think I’d like to get back into blogging — I liked that it gave my days form and focus. Other times I wonder what the heck I’d been doing putting so much of myself out there for all the world to see. Did I really just spew out my grief, talk about my father and dysfunctional brother, show my new house and yard, let everyone peek into my private life? It was one thing to talk about author-y things back when I was writing, but the rest? Eek. Not smart! So far, the balance scale is . . . balanced. If I do, I do. If I don’t, I don’t. And either way is fine.

***

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

Posted in being me, gardening, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Water Wars

January 1, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Anyone who knows western movies and books, knows that in the west, gold might be king, but water is the ultimate power. Who owns the water, owns the world, which is what the land barons in the westerns knew, and why they tried to steal as much as they could.

Today, especially in overblown states such as Colorado, that still holds true. Because of the water war lessons from those westerns, one knows never to sell one’s water rights.

Um, no. Not true. I was shocked when I returned to Colorado after spending time in California taking care of my aged father, to find that so many ranchers in Southeastern Colorado had sold their water rights to front range cities so those large cities could continue to grow. It made sense to them — their children didn’t want their way of life, and so they took the money and . . .  well, I don’t know what they did with it. All I know is that there is a heck of a lot of land around here with no water rights. (Until recently, even the rain that fell on your property in Colorado didn’t belong to you — it belonged to the state and whoever held the rights to that water.)

And the front range cities continue to fight for water to enable them to grow.

Which brings me to today’s topic: The Arkansas Valley Conduit Project. I’m sure most of you had never heard of the project until the bill to finish the project was vetoed. You’d think with all the hoopla over the veto, that the project itself was cancelled, but it wasn’t. If Colorado can dig up the money, they can continue to dig the conduit, which is supposed to deliver filtered water to Southeastern Colorado. Despite what everyone seems to believe, the project itself wasn’t vetoed, merely the method of repayment of the loans.

The project was authorized by the Federal Government in 1962, but since the participants couldn’t make the construction cost repayment schedule, nothing was ever done, and so the project languished. In 2009, the repayment terms were reduced: instead of 100% of the cost to be repaid to the Federal Government, only 35% would need to be repaid, and participants had 50 years to repay the money.

In 2020, the project received an additional $28 million federal funds to finish designing and to begin building the project. The controversy today is that a new bill (H.R. 131, the Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act) was introduced and passed by both the House and the Senate, which allowed for an additional 50 years to pay the loan, as well as a 50% reduction in the interest, and it’s that bill for the repayment schedule that was vetoed.

Nothing in that veto blocked the project. If the money can be found, the project can be finished. The only problem is, the total cost of the project is estimated as $1.4 billion dollars. (So far, $249 million has been spent.)

The conduit is to be 130 miles and to serve 50,000 people. So, do the math. $1.4 billion comes down to $11 million a mile, and a whopping $28,000 per each recipient of the water. Huh? Does that make sense? I know people need clean water, but in the past 70 plus years, many of the towns the water was supposed to serve have developed their own filtration systems, so it’s possible that the number of recipients would be even less. (But I don’t know since no one is talking about that since it doesn’t fit the narrative. The other thing no one is talking about is the final cost to the consumer. Water in Colorado is already expensive. Because of the cost of the conduit being picked up by the final users, it’s possible no one will be able to afford the water, if in fact, there is any water.)

Meantime, in the 73 years since the pipeline was conceived, the population of Colorado has grown from 1,753,947 to 5,773,714, mostly in the cities. (In certain areas in Southeastern Colorado, the population has declined significantly.) Because of the continued growth, the water wars have heated up, with front range cities demanding more and more water. Practically every inch of water in Colorado is already allocated, so there’s no guarantee that if the conduit is ever built, there will be any water to run through the pipes to the outermost reaches of Colorado. (And that’s not even taking into consideration low snowpack years.)

I also can’t help but remember other Colorado boondoggles. The Denver International Airport and all the cheating that went on back then (people who were behind the project bought up the land from unsuspecting owners for a pittance and sold it to the developers for a fortune) as well as all the problems building it, such as cost overruns and a ridiculously expensive baggage system that never was able to be fixed. Then there was the whole Silverado Savings and Loan fiasco. And now there’s the push to make Colorado 100% electric, when in fact the system is so overworked and so old, that in a recent windstorm, power had to be shut off to 100,000 people due to fire risk. Some people were out of power for days. It seems to me that this conduit follows in those same unsavory footstep.

This is not a very cheerful first-day-of the-new-year post, but I needed to get all this out of my head so that I can prepare myself for following through with my resolution of staying away from news and politics and all other issues that irritate me. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I keep the resolution — it certainly would do wonders for my peace of mind, especially since I can’t do anything about anything.

Wishing you a happy, healthy, and peaceful new year, and the strength to follow through on any resolutions you might have.

***

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

Posted in life. Tags: , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

It’s Never Too Late to Make a New Year’s Resolution

December 28, 2019 — Pat Bertram

Only 8% of people keep their New Year’s resolutions until the end of the year. Most people abandon them in the first month or even the first week.

This sad state of affairs makes us seem wishy-washy at best and lazy at worst, but there is something more at work than simply a lack of . . . well, a lack of resolve.

I’ve come to realize that instead of losing our resolve, we lose the clean-slateness. After only a few days, the sense of a new beginning dissipates. We become used to writing the new year on our checks. We’re back into the routine of our lives, probably more tired, more broke, and fatter than we were before the holidays. And somehow, in the comfort of our old lives, we forget the idealism we had when embracing a new year. We forget that for a moment we believed anything was possible, that we could become better, stronger, healthier, wiser, richer, more beloved if only we . . .

I abandoned the practice of making resolutions when still a child after I realized that by the end of that first week, I’d completely forgotten my resolution. (I only remembered when the next new year rolled around and I tried to, once again, make that same undoable commitment.)

Too many things happen during the year to make us either forget our resolve or to make us stop caring. So perhaps another reason we can’t keep New Year’s resolutions is that we make them too early in the year. What if we made the resolutions after birthday celebrations, Valentine’s Day, anniversaries, summer, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas are passed?

Today seems a perfect day to make New Year’s resolutions for 2019 — especially since I started these resolutions yesterday. So from now until the end of the year, I resolve eat more vegetables, drink more water, and do a bit of exercise.

Now I have to remember those resolutions.

Oh, the pressure!

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in culture, life. Tags: , , , , , , , . 4 Comments »

Getting a Head Start on New Years Resolutions

December 28, 2017 — Pat Bertram

I don’t really make New Year’s resolutions. Except for the calendar change, there isn’t anything that makes one year different from another. Seasons are cyclical, orbits are cyclical, life is cyclical — and by their very natures, cycles have no beginning or end. Still, a new year is a useful convention in the same way that a new day is a useful convention, giving us the feel of a new start, and so I am getting a head start on my resolutions.

Often during the year, I resolve to go back to a healthy diet and be more conscientious when it comes to an exercise program, but however disciplined I am, there comes a day when I simply do not care, and there ends the discipline. (This is, I think, a lingering effect of my grief over Jeff’s death, and seems to be a cycle that many of us left behind succumb to. On the one hand, we want to do what’s right. On the other hand, it makes no difference what we do — healthy or not, we all end up in the grave or the crematorium.)

I am going through one of my disciplined stages (or rather, my wanting-to-be-disciplined stage since this is only day two of this new cycle) in an effort to “youth” instead of “age.” Impossible, probably, to ratchet back the toll of the years, but it would take such a miraculous feat to enable me even to attempt my impossible dream of an iconic hike.

The only item on my disciplined to do list that I did not follow yesterday was perhaps the least important — the no eating after 6 o’clock rule. The others I did — stretched, lifted weights (very light weights considering my weak hand, wrist, and elbow), ate plenty of vegetables, and skipped the sugar, wheat, and milk products. Most importantly, I strapped on my backpack, added a bit of weight (the whole contraption weighed maybe eight pounds) and went for a two and a half mile trudge around the neighborhood.

Who would have thought so few pounds would make such a difference? I could walk but not with any bounce, speed, or glide to my step. And even though I used trekking poles and kept myself upright (too often you see people with backpacks bent over from the weight) my lower stomach muscles feel tight, and the inside of my thighs right above the knees are sore. (These must be muscles that my various dance classes don’t develop.) Those pains are in addition to an all-over body ache.

We’ll see what happens after a few days of this disciplined life. Before even the new year begins, I might have already broken my resolutions. But maybe not. There is that impossible dream — the unreachable star — to stretch toward.

Or trudge toward, as the case may be.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Unfinished, Madame ZeeZee’s Nightmare, Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in Adventure, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 8 Comments »

Beginning the New Year with a Clean Slate

January 2, 2014 — Pat Bertram

This time of year, there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of posts giving hints on how to keep one’s New Years resolutions. Some of the advice is even good:

  • Make your resolutions public. While we might easily break what amounts to a promise to ourselves, if we tell others, we have at least a modicum of incentive to keep going.
  • Make small, realistic resolutions for change rather than large, sweeping resolves. Bad habits cannot be broken over night; if it were that easy to change, all of us would be perfect.
  • Be specific. Instead of resolving to lose weight, for example, make a pact with yourself to be at least a couple of pounds lighter by the end of the year. Plan how you will lose that weight.
  • Instead of making resolutions, set goals. Once a resolution is broken, it is broken, and it seems futile to continue, but with goals, if we fail one day, we can pick up our banner the next day and continue charging into the future.

Despite all this advice, by this second day of the new year, many of us have already abandoned our resolves, and by the end of the first week, most of us will have given up. Only 8% of us will keep those resolutions until the end of the year.

This sad statistic makes us seem wishy-washy at best and lazy at worst, but I wonder if there is something else at work here rather than a lack of . . . well, a lack of resolve.

In response to my New Year’s post, Coloring My New Year, writer Malcolm R. Campbell (whose first book The Sun Singer will soon be republished by Second Wind Publishing!!) commented: “January 1 does have a clean-slate kind of feeling to it. Perhaps it is that fresh new calendar. Maybe it’s our constant reminders to ourselves to start writing 2014 (on checks and documents) rather than 2013. For some, it’s a line in the sand between old habits and new dreams. We can use it, the new calendar, to motivate ourselves one way or another.”

And then I realized why it’s so hard to maintain our New Years goals or stick to our resolutions.

We don’t lose the resolve. We lose the clean-slateness. After only a few days, the sense of a new beginning dissipates. We’ve become used to writing “2014.” We’re back into the routine of our lives, probably more tired, more broke, and fatter than we were before the holidays. And somehow, in the comfort of our old lives, we forget the idealism we had when embracing a new year. We forget that for a moment we believed anything was possible, that we could become better, stronger, healthier, wiser, richer, more beloved if only we . . .

I abandoned the practice of making resolutions when still a child after I realized that by the end of that first week, I’d completely forgotten my resolution. (I only remembered when the next new year rolled around and I had to, once again, make that same undoable commitment.)

As an adult, I don’t make resolutions, though during the past couple of years I have tried to make each day special, to become a bit “more” by the end of they day than I was at the beginning, even if was only by a well-chosen word, the glow of a smile, a laugh shared, a moment of appreciation for the world around me.

The truth is, whether we feel it or not, each day does begin with a clean slate.

What are you going to do with your today?

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Follow Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in culture, How to, life. Tags: , , , , , . 5 Comments »

Willpower vs. Won’t Power

January 11, 2013 — Pat Bertram

tugofwarI got spammed by a company that wants me to go to its site and take some sort of psych test to assess my willpower. The comment said their studies show that “when it comes to being disciplined and making healthy lifestyle changes, men tend to have a stronger resolve than women” and that “women may have a little more difficulty staying away from temptation and sticking to healthy habits this year.” Apparently, 46 percent of women rated their willpower as good compared to 61 percent of men.

Since the company has obviously made up its minds about my determination to stick to my resolve based on my gender, there doesn’t seem much point in following through. But besides that, the study seems dubious.

Their sweeping statements about men and women’s relative resolve was based on approximately 200 self-assessments, which isn’t exactly a “study” but more of a poll. Many things could skew the results. Perhaps men who didn’t have a strong resolve when it came to health resolutions didn’t want to go on record as having a weak resolve and so didn’t respond. Perhaps women are harder on themselves than men are, and see any infraction as a lack of resolution where men let it slough off. Perhaps men overrate themselves. Perhaps women have a better knowledge of themselves. Or perhaps men and women interpret their resolve differently. For example, if someone vows to eat healthier and passes on a second piece of cake when normally they would eat three pieces, that could be interpreted as sticking with their resolve and having willpower.

The poll revealed that “if pressured by a friend to “pig out” (after eating healthily for an entire week), 7% of women would totally give in, 46% would only share some of their friend’s junk food, and 47% would stay disciplined and eat healthy. For men, 8% would give in, 41% would share, and 51% would stay disciplined.” Not exactly a resounding indictment of women or a pat on the back for men. Assuming that the participants in the poll were equally divided between men and women, only four more men than women claimed they would stay disciplined. Which means that almost half of both sexes say they won’t. (The poll didn’t reveal if in fact more men would stay disciplined, only that they said they would.)

New Year’s resolutions are always difficult. By making a big yearly resolution, you’re setting yourself up to fail because it’s very difficult to make a major change all at once and stick with it. For one thing, habit is too strong. For another thing, you have to retrain your family and friends so they don’t pressure you back into your pre-resolve lifestyle. For still another thing, once you’ve broken the resolution, there seems less impetus to re-resolve.

Willpower in action seems more like “won’t power,” — “I won’t eat potato chips. I won’t go off my diet. I won’t sleep in instead of exercising.” For myself, I stay away from “won’t power.” The more I say I won’t do something, the more I want to do it. As for willpower, I think it’s highly overrated. I try to do the right thing for my health most of the time, and if I get side-tracked, I don’t beat myself up for it.

One thing for sure — I won’t go to the spammers site and rate my willpower. And I won’t even need any willpower to stick with that resolution!

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+

Posted in culture, internet, life. Tags: , , , , . 3 Comments »

New Year, New Beginning?

January 4, 2011 — Pat Bertram
I’ve never put emphasis on the new year because it’s a relatively arbitrary date. The calendar numbers change, but that’s all. It’s not a universal new beginning. The Chinese New Year this year is on February 3, the Jewish New Year is on September 28, and various communities in the Hindu religion have different dates — January 15, March 22, April 14, April 15, August 17, October 27. January 1 is not even the beginning of a new seasonal cycle. Nor is there any personal demarcation — no black line separates the old from the new. You carry the old year with you because you have the same problems, sadnesses, hopes, fears. In other words, you are still you. 

There is a newness to January 1, though, and that is the newness of a new day.  Unlike the year, each day is a new beginning. You wake up, and for a second everything is untouched — like new fallen snow — and you almost believe you can be anyone you want to be, do anything you want to do. Then the truth hits you.

Still, there’s hope, so I make daily resolutions instead of yearly ones. I have a list of a dozen do’s and don’ts that I would follow in a perfect world. I’m lucky to do about half of them each day, but it varies. Two days ago I did only a couple. Yesterday I did all but two. Today, of course, I resolve to follow everything on my list. The list includes such things as weight lifting and stretching, walking, writing, blogging, promoting, eating a big salad, drinking lots of water, staying away from sugar and wheat. As I said, in a perfect world . . .

Despite that, I did toast this new year, more as a symbol of newness than the reality of it. I’ve learned that since nothing seems important any more, I have to make something important every day. And toasting the new year seemed as good as anything to importantize.  (Yeah, I know — there’s no such word as importantize, but just for today —  this new day — there is.)

Posted in life. Tags: , , , , , . 4 Comments »