I could be an excellent medical diagnotician or detective, except for dealing continually with sickness and crime. Yuck. That stuff is way too sad for me to be involved with on a daily basis.

Jon,

I am now in heart failure (at 50) and have to use oxygen. My angiogram was clear and I was an avid exerciser and nutritional freak. This is due to unknown causes, but most likely a virus.

I know that people think that I smoked and did not take care of myself - that is not always the case.

 

2). Many interests that I've had on and off throughout my life are still there and they're still growing and evolving on a path of their own.  Especially ideas I've been developing over my lifetime.  Instead of incessantly building my knowledge bank and sorting them like I have for all my life I just find little trinkets of ideas that I like and throw them into their satchel with their project group.  I'd elaborate but it's just the stuff of thoughts and ideas.  No, that makes it sound weirder than it is.  I mean interests like folk medicine and stuff.  And I've always collected and traded arts and crafts techniques.  Recently I got a little time using an airbrush.  No, I have nothing to show and did nothing spectacular but it's that I doodled as a kid and then got into colored pencils later and now that interest seems to be sticking around and continuing to evolve.

I mainly feel sad that my schooling basically made me into an underachiever.

There’s no definition of where I am in life now. It’s beyond old—and I can’t write about it because I can’t define it. I’m saying goodbye to the last stage that’s definable. I have never felt this way before. I’m also feeling that there isn’t anybody who can identify with this. The other old people I know are either senile or too firmly rooted in the concrete! I’m living in a twilight world. There is a lack of definition. In younger years, you can get through these times by considering your future, but in old age, there is no more future to imagine. How can you live without the future? 

Somebody wrote "growing old gifted" but I don't remember why I first read it so I can't recall who wrote it.  I found it again by googling "gifted + old age".  It mused on about how gifted elderly people can observe the end of life without letting their ego distort their reality.  It seems the writer is saying she still has no one to "let loose" with at age 87 since elderly are age-segregated and fellow elderly are trying to tune out reality.  
http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/PDF_files/argrowold.pdf
Now I think, will I have inherited Alzheimer's from my family and still live "with my eyes wide open" in my last years?  I worry about the strangest things, so they say.  I'm not worrying about it, I just thought about it a little.  Glad I didn't say that one out loud.  "Hey, who is that actors name who plays that girl in that one movie?". Yeah, I should say something like that.

Somebody wrote "growing old gifted" but I don't remember why I first read it so I can't recall who wrote it.  I found it again by googling "gifted + old age".  It mused on about how gifted elderly people can observe the end of life without letting their ego distort their reality.  It seems the writer is saying she still has no one to "let loose" with at age 87 since elderly are age-segregated and fellow elderly are trying to tune out reality.  
http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/PDF_files/argrowold.pdf