It’s always One Thing or Another … a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

By Mark McNease/Editor

I’ve witnessed the end of a few years in my time, but seldom have I welcomed their passing as much as I welcome the final days of 2016. It has been both a year to remember and a year to forget, the way one allows painful memories to fade. While I wouldn’t trade the year for, say, a wrinkle in time that caused me to jump from 2015 to 2017, I can say without hesitation it’s been a year of cataclysm, change, overwhelming emotion, and degrees of stress I hope to never experience again.

I could write about job loss for the year, the death of one pet and health scare for another. I could write about getting shingles that still itch. I could write about an entire year consumed by political news that went from the entertaining to the grotesque, to the utterly heartbreaking. And that would be just the beginning.

[clickToTweet tweet=”One Thing or Another editor’s column: Heaven’s Diner. ” quote=”I wonder how different the world would be if we met in diners instead of on Facebook or through apps designed for brief encounters.”]It’s always One Thing or Another … a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

Mark McNease

I recently read an article about New York City’s disappearing diner culture. The writer lamented the loss of a sense of community diners gave the city over many decades, falling victim now to ever-rising rents and changing tastes. (The concept of community that takes place outside a smartphone is apparently strange and foreign to many people today.)

This, one day after ending a visit to relatives by having breakfast in a Richmond, Virginia, diner. When we walked into the place I immediately looked around at the colors inside. The exterior, in black and red, had told me I could expect something exceptionally diner-ish. The booths were red and black, the tables yellow. The two waitresses were distinctly post-punk, with tattoos and neon hair. The crowd, as is usually the case in diners, consisted of people who knew each other from years of eating there. Only first names were necessary, if names were needed at all. And each of them – men, women and children – looked as if they’d enjoyed lives filled with grits and hash browns, without a single kale salad from cradle to grave. My kind of people.

It’s always One Thing or Another … a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

By Mark McNease

It’s that time of year again when all the world celebrates a birth like no other … mine! What’s that saying? ‘60 is the new 55.’ 

October has always been my favorite month. It’s the month when autumn really makes itself felt, especially if you live where the seasons are discernible. (It recently went from air conditioner weather at the tail end of a relentlessly hot summer, to a sudden and unexpected freeze with a 30-degree drop). It’s flu season, which is always good for a sick day or two spent lying on the couch taking over-the-counter cold remedies that do nothing to stop you from feeling like death is near. Honey, is the healthcare directive in place? You’re sure you’ve still got your copy? And, How about the will? Can I change it by tomorrow? My sister forgot my birthday, I’m not sure she deserves the belt buckles.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Set for another disheartening, demoralizing “debate” in which both sides will declare victory and everyone loses.” quote=”Yet another disheartening, discouraging, demoralizing “debate” in which both sides will declare victory and everyone loses.”]

By Mark McNease

It’s always One Thing or Another … a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

I’ve always been able to identify the lowest points of my life by an inability to find anything funny. My sense of humor is a remarkably reliable barometer with which to gauge my well-being: The less I’m able to laugh at myself and the world around me, the more I’m in need of immediate therapy. Someone needs to talk me off my ledge of despondency. In those dark times I neither smile nor appreciate the smiles of others. I find them grating, in fact, and may even want to wipe them from people’s faces, gently. But then it passes; the clouds reveal a sun that has always been behind them. I appreciate the phenomenon of consciousness again, and find myself engaged in a world that is generally as marvelous as it is overwhelming.

By Mark McNease

It’s always One Thing or Another … a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

Whether or not you think 57 still counts as midlife (who doesn’t anticipate celebrating their 114th birthday wheezing out a single candle on a ShopRite cake, flanked by an anxious home health aide and an impatient funeral director), the fact remains that age and width are proportionate for most of us. Not all of us, of course. There are those among us who insist they’re only as old as they feel, despite sharp disagreement from titanium hips and birth certificates. You know who you are: you swear by kale smoothies, you’ve never met an elliptical you didn’t want to mount, and you start each day by posting life-affirming platitudes on Facebook.

By Mark McNease

I’m very pleased to announce the return of One Thing or Another, my regular Editor’s column here at lgbtSr. I finally have the time to do this properly, now that I’ve entered my, ahem, renaissance (keep reading for more on that …). Look for these biweekly, and if you have any topics to suggest, I’d love to hear them! Just email me at this link. – Mark/Editor

This must be what graduating high school felt like. It’s been awhile so I can’t remember the exact sensations, but I’m sure it came with the same, “Oh my God, I didn’t think that would ever get here” feeling I had when I left my office job for the last time two weeks ago. And with it, the ubiquitous office cubicle that most closely approximates solitary confinement in the modern American workplace. I’d known I wouldn’t miss this particular job for longer than it took me to leave the building, and wasn’t surprised when I felt that way by the time the elevator descended three floors.