I keep moving the goalposts for what counts as “old,” but that’s getting harder to do every year.

Of course, old is at least partly subjective. I remember hearing a couple of young college students, possibly fresh out of high school, talking about a babysitter, or something like that: “Isn’t she 23? That’s hella old!”

I don’t think I ever considered 23 to be old. 50, maybe. 60, for sure, as I wrote when I was turning 59:

But 60 feels like a threshold, with all the superstitious weight of a liminal space — a transition to old age.

Somehow I managed to step over that threshold without stepping into that identity. After all, “age is just a number,” right? (Tell that to my knees….)

Unfortunately, The Beatles burned this specific number into my brain:

Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m 64?

At some point, I’m just going to have to acknowledge that I’m an old fart.

That said, retirement has made me feel younger (aside from the knees). As I wrote when I turned 60, I had been clawing back identities that had been important to me when I was younger — in particular, those of musician and reader. It was hard, though: my job as a community college teacher didn’t leave much time to pursue music or reading — and even when I had time, I didn’t have energy. Endless grading, and especially the increasing amount of A.I. slop I was receiving toward the end, is not conducive to outside interests.

But retirement has let me take on those identities again. I’ve been recording my own stuff for three or four hours pretty much every morning, and stuff for my old band for a couple hours more. And I’m most of the way through a fourth book in three months (the first being the time-consuming Ulysses). It’s good.

I still have a lot more I want to do (or that I want to want to do): I want to write somewhat regularly for this blog, as well as some fiction. I want to practice my guitar, and learn some piano and drums and mandolin. I want to travel a bit — though, I’m discovering, I want that less than I expected.

But for now, I’m reveling in the freedom that comes from having no real deadlines.

I will say, though, that the weeks pass by pretty quickly. I’d expected my perception of time to slow down once I stopped working. But, in the same way Prufrock measured out his life in coffee spoons, I measure mine in pillboxes — and I am always surprised when the week has passed and it’s time to refill them.