"Use it or lose it"

The hardest thing about teaching an old dog new tricks is convincing her she can do it.

I can't believe the calendar is ushering me into the years one might be considered an "old dog," but there you have it. I'm in my late fifties, and it's not like when my thirteen-year-old granddaughter was a baby. Then almost anytime she was with me, someone would mistake her for my own. (Or at least I fell for it.)

Today with the brand new grandbabies, that's not happening.  (Actually it happened once and like any momentous event I could tell you the time and the place.)

A couple of times in the past year I have even been asked in a restaurant if I would be taking the senior discount today. I don't know whether to slap the server or be appreciative of the offer. I usually take the offer; at least it's a tiny reward for accepting a truth I would just look a fool to deny.

The men that flirt with me now are such geezers I don't even bother to tell my husband--it's just embarrassing. But I notice that the women who flirt with HIM are not that bad. The hair on his head is almost nonexistent and his beard practically gray, but somehow this works for him. Me, if I added pure white hair to this package it would be totally giving up the ship--something I'm not ready to do.

We've all heard that both body and brain age more favorably with exercise--a "use it or lose it" principle. Lately I have read more about a time span in middle-age and even beyond where the brain , when stimulated, experiences a kind of "growth spurt."  I can use this about now; if I can't reverse the obvious it would sure be nice to offset things with the benefit of a "smart" advantage of finally getting with the program of technology, for example.

This I have been an "old dog" about, ever since the earliest cell phone arrived in my life, about 1997.  Yes, I got on board with a family plan, for sensible reasons and with a sensible phone. But if that first phone hadn't become obsolete, I would probably still have it. Clunky, with no features other than a keypad that enabled me to reach my family members and have them reach me; once I understood it I wanted nothing more.

Voice mail at home or on the move is irretrievable to me. Just too problematic: one system overrides another and passwords and codes are required to be reset far too often for me to keep up with.

Except to arrive at my favorite few channels, a remote control just boggles my mind. Programmable pads on things like our microwave oven, stove, washer, dryer and even coffeemaker go unused to their very "featuristic" potentials because I just don't get any of it. Just give me the basics, please, it's all I even WANT to handle.

A lover of words though, needs a computer, and the internet. One can still create a document the old-fashioned way, but the computer with internet plays a vast new role in how to get it from here to there, and how to get it READ, by one or many. The whole premise is a bottomless resource for someone who writes.

Or someone who sells. The internet has created such an affordable way of doing business that almost anyone who takes the initiative can try their hand.  No longer does a person have to establish a physical storefront in a viable location just to get going. No longer is anyone dependent on a limited local clientele, or fully helpless when competition moves in across the way.

I've known this for a long time, but the internet came along about the time cell phones did, when I had already bought a building on a small town Main Street, and couldn't know how technology would impact businesses of all kinds everywhere.

And did I have the time, energy, and motivated wherewithal to even pay attention? No, I dismissed the importance of technology, thinking it, willing it not to play a role in in my business.

As related in my first blog entry, I did what I did and it was what it was.

I am now onto a new frontier, opening an online store with two friends.  In order to open our store I'm now learning things I've resisted for many years. Most days it feels like one step forward and two back but I'm now clicking and dragging photos with the best of them, and soon I will try posting pictures to this blog.  That is WOW to me; who would've ever thought I could do this?!

Evidently the scientists, who do their research and tell people my age: You can do this. You can learn and try new things and your brain will work with you to meet your goals.

I had to really want this to be willing to learn new things. What is it that you'd really like to try, but have resisted for your own reasons?

Maybe it's your time!

Note: Please look at my next entry to see how I arrived at my store name, "Sterbuck Farm."