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One of the downsides of being retired is our body and mind starts go down hill. It is one thing to see our physical self-go downhill and face stiff bones and muscles but another thing to have friends and relatives tell us we are slipping mentally.
With me, it is not a question of memory but personality. People close to me have pulled me aside and tell me that my personality has changed and I have lost my ability to be likable and carry on a pleasant conversation. They say I used to be nicer and had a better gift of gab. Now people are avoiding me because, personality-wise, I am slipping. What a terrible thing to say, but I have to believe they are just being honest.
I'm a young retiree. Physically I'm in the best condition of my life due to having the time to get in about 1-2 hrs of fitness activities.
Mentally, I only find that I have brain block (remembering a name) more often. That's about it. Mid fifties, btw, not an oldtimer, yet. Bad ominous sign? Maybe. My problem-solving abilities might be a little duller since I don't have to be as proactive as I was as a manager/worker-bee and put out fires regularly.
I can't imagine what a 70-yr old POTUS has for faculties. One of the very few things I admire about our current POTUS is that he's still in the mix at 70.
I don't think there was ever a time when I was nice, pleasant or likeable. I have never been one to gab. I am self centered so if people were avoiding me, I would not even notice....or care.
Maybe you just don't feel like putting up with their silliness any longer.
Heck the other day I even talked back to an 80 year old. She thinks she's still a teenager and irritates the heck out of me. I find it hard to believe that she reproduced!
Sometimes there can be false alarms. About two decades ago - I would have been in my early fifties - I went to enter my PIN in the ATM machine and couldn't remember it. It was a four-digit number that I had been using for quite some time. I was profoundly shaken, thinking that my life was over. Not knowing what to do, I drove around the neighborhood slowly for a while. The PIN came back to me, so I went and successfully used the ATM machine. No similar glitch has yet to occur. I do sometimes block people's names, but I know hundreds and hundreds of people by name, so that is not the same as forgetting a very familiar and rather important four-digit number.
I have no idea how to explain that isolated event.
Often when I am on the sofa watching tv I will grab my phone with the purpose of looking up some information and before I can start to begin my search I will realize the phone is in my hand and I can't remember why I picked it up. Sometimes it will come to me but sometimes it won't and that freaks me out a little.
Last week I went to a huge shopping mall that I normally don't go to and was excited to just get out of the house and walk around. I must have been very excited because I parked and walked in and then after an hour completely forgot where I had entered the mall. It was pouring down raining and I was forced to walk around the entire mall's parking lot in the rain for almost an hour looking for my car. Finally, I found it but I was scared to death.
Another thing that hit me is I had no one I could call to get help finding my lost car. I had pissed off too many of my friends who have run for cover.
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