Call Me a Grammar Freak… but really, isn’t it just Common Sense?

The older I become the more I notice stuff.  I notice how badly some young girls dress, I notice how inappropriate some stuff is on TV and I notice bad grammar, spelling, punctuation and the chronic misuse of words.

Now don’t get me wrong, I know with the advent of computers, spell check and the relentless desire for immediate news and information to be published in the moment will cause things to be overlooked.  Things to be written incorrectly with no time to proof read.  Things that are just published as fast as possible in real time, without any concern for the actual accuracy of language use or basic spelling.  I understand all that and I accept it.

I accept it when you are chatting in a chat room or a messenger, obviously you want to type your message using the least amount of keystrokes as possible so you type things like “i will c u l8r lol”  and I do this in all chats, on text messages and when commenting or writing statements on social networking sites.  I do not have a problem with abbreviated typing, acronyms, shortening of words, leaving out commas, apostrophes and always using lower case.  This is normal for this type of situation.  I’ve been on chat groups since 1995 and at first I was horrified at the terrible spelling when I realised, that is what you do.  It’s the way it should be… again in those forums/situations it’s perfectly acceptable.

Then there’s normal posting on websites and forums, commenting, status updates, tweets, blogs things like that.  In these cases of course there is room for error.  It is no big deal if there are some mistakes or misspellings although why people don’t just run a spell check when writing a large piece of text like a blog is beyond me.  Spell check doesn’t fix everything but it can correct the most obvious mistakes.  But you still need to proof read.  More on that later.  So in my case, when I post on social networking sites or Twitter for instance, sometimes I abbreviate words or leave out commas, but I try to keep my spelling and word use accurate.  After all you want your message to be understood and not confusing.  So in this situation it’s acceptable to be a little slack and bend the rules a bit, I don’t have a problem with that at all. 

What I can understand is when someone will shorten a word like phone to fone.  Or tomorrow to 2moro.  That doesn’t bother me.  What I can’t accept is when people use the wrong words or actually can’t spell words that should have been learned in primary school.  Sure, not all of us listened in school, or even went to school that much but people, please.  Give me a break.  You have to know the difference between There, Their and They’re.  This is common sense.  So is the use of Your and You’re.  Come on … everybody has to know the correct spelling and use of these words!!!

I cannot tell you how much it irks me to constantly go online and see words like these and many more such as Where, we’re and were… and my pet hate the misuse of It’s and Its.  So annoying.  I’m not here to give you a grammar lesson.  There are many sites on the internet that will help you with that, but seriously, I think everyone needs to wake up and realise that it’s not a good look!

Again as I stated before, none of this stuff matters when you are texting or chatting etc.  But I tell you, it does matter on websites such as news.com.au and other official news sites, information sites, educational sites, and official government sites.

I am sorry but I do not accept that a site like news.com.au can possibly find it acceptable to publish stories with incorrectly spelt headlines, and content with bad grammar, wrong word use, and obvious spelling mistakes.  This is totally unacceptable.  These are sites that are used for research, information and education.  They are not setting a good example.  What does it say about their company when they cannot spare two minutes to proof read an article before it’s published? Is it really that urgent that proof reading is just not an option anymore? I find that hard to believe.  I worked as a proof reader for a newspaper company in the 80’s.  My job was to read what the editor had already approved and check for any obvious spelling or grammatical errors.  After all, the writer’s job was to write the article, not worry about all that little stuff, that was my job.  If a newspaper article was published with mistakes in the body, let alone the headline, somebody would be out of a job, seriously fast.

Of course I am not forgetting that those were the days of manual typewriters, and no computers.  We started to get computers in the late 80’s and electronic typewriters and word processors were starting to be used more often.  But originally, if you typed something wrong, you had to type the whole page or article again, manually.  And newspapers were printed from plates of type face, not from a computer and a printer!  So what I am getting at is that because we had to be careful in those days, because it was such a hard job to have to re-do things over and over again, it seems that naturally more care was taken.  More proof reading was done, more checking and consequently you would barely, if ever, see a spelling mistake or error of any kind in the final publication.

Now of course with computers and the immediate need for news, we find stuff being published with mistakes all over the place, all the care and caution is gone.  And I’m not just talking about the online newspapers, but the print newspapers.  The mistakes in the printed newspapers today make me cringe and make me wonder, do they need a proof reader? Hello, I’m here!

Now of course as discussed, there is a big difference between abbreviating words in chats and texting, to outright misspellings and incorrect word use.  We also have the phenomenon of typos.  The good old typo has caught us out many a time.  If you are a touch typist like me you will know the true meaning of a typo.  A typo is not a spelling mistake.  A typo is when you accidentally type two letters inversed such as “hte” he instead of “the” or “lauhg” instead of laugh as the letters are close to each other on the keyboard and being a touch typist, you don’t look at the keyboard and all it takes is for your fingers to start on the wrong letters and typos are the result.  This is also perfectly acceptable in chats, online forums and social networking as anyone can see that it’s not a spelling mistake or a wrong word being used.  Typos are usually auto corrected in programs such as Word so they are not an issue for publications. They do tend to appear in forums and Twitter and of course chats and texting but that’s not an issue.  I am guilty of typo errors and it comes with the territory!

Now we come to the fun issue of the wonderful “auto correct” feature now found on most smart phones like the iPhone.  This is a great feature, make no mistake, it’s awesome.  I love how it auto completes really long words so that I don’t have to type them myself.  The only problem is that it tends to come up with some innovative and sometimes rather embarrassing words that you certainly never meant to write.  Just Google sites such as autocorrectfail.com and damnyouautocorrect.com to see what I’m talking about!  The rule here is this, PROOF READ!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not once but twice and three times!!!!!!!  The only way to escape embarrassing auto corrections is to check what you’ve written BEFORE you press SEND!  This works very well.  I cannot tell you how many times I’ve typed a message thinking it’s perfectly fine, but being the proof reading psycho freak that I am, I go back and check it, and find a word or words that really did not look good and would’ve been rather embarrassing to say the least and I thank my obsessive nature each time for taking the time to check it before pressing SEND!

So if you’ve read this far and are still here I commend your perseverance!  And what is the lesson of my rather long post today?  Learn proper English people, learn when to use proper words, know when abbreviated text and acronyms are appropriate and when they’re not, and most of all, before publishing, sending or posting anything: PROOF READ your work and give people like me some respite from the constant bombardment of silly mistakes and bad English!

The Importance of Me Time

In this day and age it seems we are all too busy, running around, doing stuff, keeping up with everything and we barely have time to eat and sleep.  I find coming from growing up an only child, with too much time on my own, that I sometimes miss that time where I could just sit, think about nothing much and just recharge my mental batteries.

I can’t think of the last time I had time to be alone and reflect on life, meditate or just be on my own without anyone around and things to get done. It just doesn’t happen an awful lot for most people I would imagine.

I think it’s very important to make the time for this.  We all need time alone; we need time with our thoughts.  In my case, unfortunately that time usually comes when I go to bed at night exhausted but then can’t sleep because I have a million things going through my mind that I never get time to address or deal with during the day.  So then comes the annoyance of insomnia that haunts me more than usual lately.  I do have things on my mind but it’s not like they are major or huge significant things… just stuff that I’ve forgotten to think about or take care of during the day, it all comes flooding into my mind as soon as I lay down my head to sleep at night!  This is the worst possible time for this stuff to come into my mind, when all I want to do is sleep!

I think that one way to solve all this is to find the time, even if it’s not every day, but at some point during the week, to sit down and let all the stuff go through your mind.  Then address each issue as it comes, make plans, organise things, write things down (this does help for me, if I put stuff down in writing it makes more sense and is a lot more structured than random thoughts going nowhere in my mind).  I have done this a few times but the problem remains, where do we find the time?  We all have busy lifestyles, work, kids, social lives, maintaining a household, maintaining relationships with family and friends, keeping up with everything that needs to get done and the list goes on.  For me, sometimes I find a window of opportunity for this rare thing called “me time”.  When I know I have a free weekend coming up where I will be on my own, with no commitments or nothing planned that I need to do without fail, I make sure I slot this time in for me, and me only.

It might sound very unsocial or very selfish or maybe it’s just not considered nice to be a hermit, turn off the phone and not return calls.  However, I need it.  If I don’t get that time (it can be from a couple of hours to a day maximum, I don’t think I’ve managed 2 whole days to date though!) I really start to get a bit stressed.  Once I get that time in, got the stuff dealt with or organised or at least addressed things that have been on my mind for ages I feel a whole lot better.  And sometimes I just need to zone out and watch trash TV or read a book or just meditate for an hour and all is good.  It’s amazing what some peace, solitude and stillness can do for our minds and our general well-being.

The problem is that I plan this time quite often, but sadly it rarely happens.  I’ve had times where I’ve planned out my whole “me time” weekend only to have things that come up where I have to go out or have people over or drive somewhere or do chores that need to be done and so on.  But it’s worth the effort in my opinion because I can safely say that it keeps me sane and gives me back some energy and the power to get on with life and all its challenges.

Why They Don’t Get It

I find as I get older I seem to always think back to things of the past, like when I was a kid growing up in the 60’s and 70’s.  I guess it’s because I get reminded of things when I hear certain music or see things on TV or movies that remind me of those times. 

Just the other night I was watching a movie set in 1973.  My daughter, the wonderful Miss C, was also watching.  Certain times during the movie she would exclaim “Oh My God that looks like you!” I must say the girl in the movie was the same age I was at that time and looked like me, and funnily enough, she wore flared corduroy pants like a pair that I had and Miss C had seen my old photos.  At times she would say things like: “Why don’t they use the mobile?”  I had to remind her this is 1973.  There were no mobiles.  She covered herself by stating that of course she knew that. 

Then there was a post on Facebook by a friend who lives in my mother’s home town in Southern Portugal.  This page is about the town and its traditions.  The photo he uploaded was of the milkman probably from the 1950’s or earlier.  The milkman would go door to door with his dairy cow and his milk containers.  He would knock on the door and ask how much milk you needed that day, and proceed to milk the cow into the measured containers that you then took inside and poured into your own milk bottle.  I showed Miss C this photo with the large dairy cow, cowbell and all and the milkman at the door of a little house in the town and told her what he was doing.  She laughed incredulously and exclaimed that there’s no way that could be for real.

Then there was the time Miss C complained of no food in the house.  Of course the pantry was full but to her, there was nothing.  I explained that I never actually said such a thing when I was her age.  I ate what I got, and that was it.  She looked at me strangely.  I told her about my father and how he grew up in the country living off the farmland and eating whatever was available at the time, and that it was nothing to eat bread that was six months old and hard as a rock.  They killed the pig once a year at Christmas and that pig’s meat was cured and made into everything from smoked bacon to chorizo which lasted 12 months until the next pig killing.  Of course, she didn’t believe me.  Come to think of it, when my father told me these stories, I didn’t believe him either and used to just say sure, as if.

What I’m getting at is that when we live in a world so far removed from a way of life long gone, it’s very difficult to understand that people actually did live that way.  When I was 12 which is Miss C’s age now, of course we had no computers or mobile phones, let alone internet or anything like it.  We had the old black bakelite telephone that rang with the “old phone” ring tone which funnily enough, is my iPhone ring tone, and you had to use the manual number dial to call someone.  I showed Miss C one of these phones once at a market, she was amazed at how you had to dial the numbers one by one.  She obviously thought it was a toy or something.

I suppose I do appreciate her inability to understand certain things as I was the same when my mother and father used to tell me stuff about their childhood.  Like my mother, when she was that age she would crochet and embroider doilies by the window during the day, then when it was dark they had little oil lamps that would serve as their light.  They ate the fish her father caught during the night fishing the night before and they would have their own version of social networking which consisted of the girls sitting by their ground floor windows and chatting to whomever passed by (and they knew everyone) and met most of their husbands this way.  Imagine that, well I couldn’t then and I can’t now!

Not that it’s bad to have today’s advancement in technology and the greater standard of living that education, stable economies (well in some places!), and advanced societies have created for us to live in these days.  I just think that sometimes it’s good to think back and realise that our families managed to accomplish quite a lot with the limitations they had.  I managed to do all my homework without the aid of Google!  Shocker!  I got together in the street with my friends on weekends without the aid of texting or Facebook!  Everyone managed somehow, and it makes me happy to know that Miss C will have it easier, much easier than I and certainly my parents ever did.  It’s just that sometimes - and I now realise where my father was coming from - it pays to realise how lucky we are and that life is good and we really have nothing to complain about, even if dialling an old telephone is just too weird to contemplate!

Past Connections

Lately I’ve found some contacts on Facebook that are people I haven’t seen probably since 1983 when I lived in Portugal and went to school there for three years.

I have maintained contact with many people I met and became good friends with and also family of course that I met when I moved to Portugal in 1980 when I was 16.  I was born in Sydney and lived here until my parents decided to move to Portugal when my father retired as that’s where both of my parents were born.

So when I arrived there I didn’t know anyone, not a single person.  I had not met any family that lived there apart from some family of my father’s that had lived in Sydney and moved back there before we arrived.  It was a culture shock on arrival I can tell you that much!  Portugal just came out of a Dictatorship and had a peaceful revolution in 1975 to establish a Democratic Republic, and by 1980 things were getting settled but the country was still way behind compared to Spain and other Western European countries when it came to technology, communications, construction, industry, government and education.  The stunted growth of the country during those 50 odd years of a Dictatorship would take at least 20 years to overcome so in 1980 things were far from good.

I moved to a fishing village called Albufeira in the southern province of the Algarve which is now a major tourist destination because of the wonderful weather and stunning beaches.  Back then we had running water for 3 hours a day and electricity sometimes didn’t work.  TV was only working for 8 hours a day and there was only one channel and the same for the radio.  Needless to say I was rather bored.  But the beach was good and through my cousin, the daughter of my uncle (mother’s brother) who was the same age as me I got to hang out and make new friends.  Once summer was over though we had to start school.

This town had no high school.  The only high schools were located out of town in other cities such as Portimão and Silves.  I was to go to the Silves Technical High School in the city of Silves which was inland, out in the country.

To get to school we had to catch a bus at 7am, if you missed the bus, you had no other way to get there unless someone’s parents drove you as there was no other bus to catch that would arrive at Silves on time for school.  We had to walk from home through the main town of Albufeira then go up the church steps and up the hill to the bus stop every morning.  On the bus is where we met others from Albufeira who were also going to Silves. 

So we would get on the bus for this one and a half hour trip to school every day.  The bus went from Albufeira through various small country towns to arrive at Silves by about 8:30 or 9:00 am if it didn’t break down!  At each stop the country kids would get on, kids from Guia, Algoz, Tunes, Messines and other towns.

Some of these friends I would see only during the school year as they never came to Albufeira in summer and we never went to the country.  Others I would see all year around because they lived close by in Albufeira or would holiday there for the summer.  Then when I left Portugal to return to Sydney in 1984, I lost contact with most of them except those closest to me and my family.  I had actually finished school in 1983 so some school friends I haven’t seen since then. 

Facebook is good for this kind of thing.  I had some friends on there that I had been in touch with all these years and from those, they then had other friends etc. etc. and recently I added a few that just appeared out of the blue and I marvel that we can now speak, look at photos, write to each other, chat online and catch up with each other about the last 27 odd years!  I know it seems strange but I marvel at these things!

We had some good times, the bus rides were a riot, there were some funny characters on there, and adventures getting home were even funnier.  The return bus didn’t leave Silves until 5pm and sometimes our classes finished at 1pm.  We didn’t want to hang around this boring country city; we wanted to get back to Albufeira to the cafés and the beach - where the action is - so naturally, we hitchhiked home.  None of our parents knew of course, we would hang out in cafés and bars till it was normal home time as if we’d caught the bus and then went home, our parents clueless.  But those were good times, and these new connections brought back some great memories for me.

I’m sad that I don’t have any photos at all from those school times, only some family shots but none of all my school friends from that period.  But the memories are still there and I’m thankful to be in touch again with some great people that I never thought I would hear from again who remind me of a great time in my life.

Personal Values - A Guide for Life?

Today I was inspired by reading an article on a dear friend’s blog and it got me thinking...

Sometimes I wonder if most people have any awareness of their own, deep, core and critical personal values.  I for one pondered that question for a while… First, what are values exactly?  Well they are basically beliefs we hold dear to us and are intrinsic to our very being and our life in general.  Normally these beliefs start early in life and remain constant over time, even though they may change slightly or be forgotten on occasion - however they are always there.  They are the guides we live by, how we live our lives depends on what we hold most dear to our being, and those are our core values and beliefs. 

So in my case I have values such as honesty, loyalty, integrity, acceptance, trust, compassion, stability, security and many others that I live by.  What I want to focus on is that the article mentioned above says that to be happy you must live your life by setting goals that are in tune with all of your values.  So in other words, your goals in life and your aspirations and dreams must be congruent with your values otherwise happiness cannot be achieved.

In summary this just means that when you are working hard to achieve whatever goals you have set you have to maintain your values at all times in order to achieve happiness and success on a higher level.  This is beyond positive thinking and all that stuff about affirmations and manifesting from the Universe and so forth.  I think this is really important because I see it every day, people losing sight of their values!  So many people are living their lives on a daily basis, going through the motions and achieving successes here and there but if only they realised that if they focused more on their core values and pursued ideals that matched them, their lives would dramatically improve.

I am also guilty of this myself.  My values have not changed, but there were times when I forgot them, lost sight of them, or ignored them, and needless to say those were not good times for me.  There were times I settled for situations that I knew were not right for me, and I forgot about my core values and remained on auto-pilot before I had some sort of wake up call or another that would snap me out of it and wake me up to what was important: I had to live my life in congruence with my core values.  Once that light bulb went off, my life changed right away and a weight was lifted, I felt at ease with myself and things just fell into place.  And I’m sure many people go through this from time to time.  You also know when you are not living your life according to your values as you get an instinctive feeling that something is not quite right.

I don’t think it’s as important to put your values in any specific order as many books say to do, I think it’s more important that each day you remember what they are and you live and achieve success with those values at the forefront of everything you do.  Of course this is not the same as setting priorities as we all know we have to do this on a daily basis. So in essence, having our values, knowing what they are, prioritising our life and setting goals according to those values and what’s most important to us, is a good recipe for happiness and a fulfilled life and then success will surely follow.  I think this makes perfect sense!

Social Networking: Sometimes Good, Sometimes Bad - But I Like It

Social Networking, the wonderful idea that you can find out what anyone is doing at any time and they can also find out what you are doing at any time.

At first I thought this was a load of crap, and asked myself: why the hell would I want to be on a social networking site?

Then due to a few very persuasive friends, I decided to create a MySpace page.  At first it was a bit of fun and I could add all the bands and musicians I knew and admired and be informed of what they were doing, new albums, gigs, what they got up to and where and how often etc.  All very useful information (or so I thought at the time), whenever I bothered to go there to read the updates.  I just put up a few pics and videos, added a few friends and music-related users and so forth.  It was fun and at the time (about 4 or 5 years ago now) a novelty and quite addictive when you started chatting to people on the site, adding more photos and videos, reading people's profiles, reading all the updates, changing your profile graphics, checking out all the new friend requests you got overnight and so on.  But I soon got bored, and getting bombarded with friend requests from bands I've never heard of and people I didn't know or didn't want to know got kind of old really fast.  So I sort of went off it after a while.

Then somehow I got convinced that Facebook was a good idea.  At first I thought, nope, don't need it, I have no interest in trying to keep up with people on yet another site.  But I thought OK why not and I had been told that everyone was using it so I got on there too, mainly to see what all the fuss was about and if it was really as cool as everyone was saying.

Over time I stopped using MySpace and now I only go there to check band updates that's all and that's about once a month if that, it doesn't help of course that they've made it the most user unfriendly piece of crap I've ever seen in my life.  And now I basically use Facebook constantly, every day.  I have signed up for many other sites only because I have friends in Europe who use them like Bebo and HiFive and other similar sites but I do not log onto those any more than every 2 or 3 months.

Facebook is now the staple "Social Networking" site for everyone it seems and for me too.  However some people take it way too seriously and some people misuse it beyond what it's intended for.  But I must say, I really do like it, and really enjoy using it, even when they make stupid changes to it without giving you any warning and even when sometimes stupid people take things way too far.

The way I see it, sites like Facebook are simply there to keep up with friends, share photos and experiences with friends who live far away or those who you don't see very often, or share the same things with your close friends as well such as social events and the subsequent photos and comments about the event so everyone can enjoy the memories and share them with their friends and family as well.

It's a good way to keep up with things and events, and these days bands and musicians are using it too as a good medium to share their information.  It's used as a business tool too for promoting your business and there are many other things it can be used for.

But in my case, I mainly use it for keeping in touch with friends near and far.  I use it to organise events, share photos, share experiences, catch up with people, locate long lost friends or relatives and get in touch again.  I love to see what everyone is up to, where they've travelled, what photos they've taken, how their families are going, and all those things that you normally wouldn't see or know without Facebook.  I guess I will admit it, I like snooping on what people get up to, for some reason, I find it interesting :)

The bad thing about Facebook is how some people just get too serious.  Sometimes people will make a silly comment and things get out of control, friendships are lost and, God forbid, you get "defriended" or "deleted" from a friend's list!! I find this hilarious.  I've had many instances of people who have not known how Facebook works or have mistakenly written a post or a comment publicly that was meant to be private and have caused all sorts of drama... The funny thing is, it's only the Internet people... it's not reality... if you write something silly, you can delete it, apologise to the person concerned and have a laugh about it.  It's not that serious! 

I have been online now since probably 1995, and I learned early on that if you take everything you read online seriously, you would either have no life or friends or be in a padded cell.  Yet people still do.  People fly off the handle, create a massive drama and go on and on about the silliest little online comments that appear from time to time on Facebook or other sites.  People, lighten up, it's only the Internet, nobody will care in like, 5 minutes from now!  I have been flabbergasted at what people have done because of a comment on Facebook, they have deleted friends, they have stopped talking to people, they have bad mouthed people, created huge dramas and all sorts of mayhem and it makes me wonder why.   Why is that?  I guess it's because some people have no life, have small minds, and the only thing they have is drama and gossip and I guess every little thing they can hang onto they will to create what they need for their small, meaningless lives.

So what I have realised is yes, you have to be careful on Facebook, you can't say too much, you have to take what you read with a grain of salt and have a laugh.  Seriously, you really have to laugh!!  And to avoid the idiot over-reactors, you have to make sure when you post something that you remember, it's a public forum, everyone will read it!  And then if you aren't prepared for the consequences, don't post it or delete it once you realise your mistake!  You only have to go to sites like Lamebook.com to read the crap that people put on a public forum!!  Seriously, if you have a serious issue at home with your partner, does that really have to be made public?  If you have personal problems or sensitive health issues, does that really need to be there for everyone to see?  If you feel the need to gossip about people, do you really need to make it nasty in public?  

So despite the good, there is always the bad, and this goes for most things in life not just Facebook!  So think before you post or before you upload that "questionable" photo!  And if someone writes something about you that is a little upsetting, remember it's just an online website, and it really isn't your whole life, so just lighten up!

So it's a New Year...

But how come I don't feel new? A New Year is good in theory, out with the old, in with the new and that's a great thing.  However I just don't feel new but don't get me wrong, I don't feel old either.  I guess the New Year concept takes a while to sink in then by the time I get into it it's already halfway gone!

This brings me to the topic of age.  I would be a liar if I said that I wasn't afraid of aging, in fact I'm really not keen on it at all.  I had not expected to get to this age so fast, my daughter is starting high school this year for goodness sake, and that's scary enough!  I don't feel my age, well maybe sometimes but I don't "think" my age...  I know that the body doesn't take the punishment it used to and bounce back as quickly as it used to!  I remember the good old days, work all day, drink every night then work all day and do it all over again, day after day.  Those were the days. Nowadays, I might have a few drinks on a weekend at some event or at the pub, and then I get a lingering headache and other pains that seem to hang around for days on end.

But also when I was younger I seemed to get more sleep.  Whatever happened to good old sleep?  Sleep is now the enemy.  The enemy you can't conquer even though you try everything to win it over, nothing works.  It still escapes.  I do attempt to get to bed at a good hour (well mostly) but despite my good efforts, I still can't seem to move when the alarm goes off.  I blame it on aging. I never had that problem 20 years ago, and used to get by on 5 hours if that...  But at least when I wanted to sleep, I could!

Then there is the issue of the effort involved in trying to look good.  Of course, the older you get the harder this becomes.  I remember just slapping on some eyeliner and lip gloss and out the door I went.  These days there is a far more time consuming process involved.  OK maybe it's just vanity, but I am female and we do think about these things.  The hair is thinner and hardly there these days, but after all the perming, dying, chemical treatments etc. it's been put through in all these years, it's hardly surprising.  So more effort involved with that too.  Then the body of course is not as bouncy and firm as it used to be, but I am not a fitness freak.  My exercise routine consists of walking in the mall.  I suspect though that this may not be enough to keep gravity at bay...

And then there's the strange phenomenon of how people age so differently.  When I see my old high school friends (no pun intended) from 30+ years ago, the variations in their aging processes is quite astounding.  Some look exactly the same, with maybe an extra wrinkle here and there or a grey hair here and there.  Some look like you would expect after 30 years, they've put on a little weight, look their age but still look like the same person.  Then there are the ones that are total shockers.  The ones that have aged really badly.  I thank the Universe that I am not one of them.

It's like the rock stars you see from the 70's and 80's.  You remember how they looked then.  You see how they look now.  Some look fine, or they look like you would expect.  Others bring on an extreme cringe reaction and you question if they are actually the same person.  And still others, look way better than they used to when they were younger.  Go figure.  Aging just sucks in general but I will say that for some people it is actually a good thing.

Of course with age, comes wisdom.  And again, not in all cases.  I know people my age who have not changed the way they live in all their lives and have not learned a single lesson.  I don't understand that myself, after all we are here to learn lessons and grow from them and progress in life.  It's sad that some people never do that.  But I would like to think that I have and the people I surround myself with have as well.  The older you get the smarter you should get, or at least, you should know better.  Even if you don't really grow up except in the number of years that makes up your age, you can still be young at heart while having progressed within yourself to grow into the person you are proud to be today.