Surviving Life After 40

How's Life After 40 Treatin' Ya?

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Are you over 40? Can you even remember your 30's?

I celebrated my 40th with a big bash last year. Nine months later, I'm already beginning to feel 5 years older!

I get sleepy much earlier at night, have way less energy during the day and seldom have any interest in going out at night... instead preferring the peace, quiet and comfort of my sofa.

Can you identify with any of this? When did we get so old?


Is Life After 40 Stressing You Out?

I can still remember staying up until 1 or 2 am most nights, getting up at 6 without groaning, going out about twice a month and basically having some kind of social life.

Nowadays, I'm way too tired to be social!

I guess a big part of it is the fact that I've been bitten by the blogger bug, but still I feel like I've lost a big part of myself.


When's The Last Time You Went Out For Dinner?

And if I wasn't completely convinced that I'd fallen victim to the aging process, last fall I was diagnosed with high blood pressure after deciding that I was now old enough to start getting regular physicals.

That hit me like a ton of bricks... high blood pressure? Even my mom wasn't diagnosed until her early fifties!

I was sooo panicked, especially considering that I could easily have gone on for years without knowing!


At This Age, It's Crucial To Monitor Your Health

After mourning the official loss of my "youth" and drowning in self-pity for a while, I finally came to terms with the whole thing and reorganized my life as per doctor's orders.


Stress Reduction Is Key!

Thankfully, because I caught it early, I've succeeded in controlling my blood pressure without medication. As a result, I've been able to continue blogging, especially because my sisters help me out a lot with housework during the week.

Since the diagnosis, my husband Rick has been monitoring my online activity in order to make sure that I don't overdo it... he knows me so well!

He threatened to hide my laptop if I didn't scale back my blogging hours - that worked because he knows how much I hate typing on a cell phone :)

I'm not scared though, because when he sees how crazy I get without having my blog as an emotional outlet, he'll be begging me to pick back up my favorite hobby!

I must admit, though - it's been great to kick back for a bit and let others help me out around the house, even though that requires partial surrender of my household authority and tolerance for other people's way of doing things.

The added bonus is that I now get to spend way more quality time with my mom and siblings.

So Rick stays off my back, provided that I spend no more than an hour a day blogging (except on post day), plus I have to let my relatives help me out with most of the housework so that I can focus on the kids.

He now takes care of Fri and Sat dinners, which the kids are elated about because Fri's now "Pizza Night" and we go to some kind of steakhouse or seafood joint on Saturdays.


Mmmm... Your Kinda Health Food!

This turn of events has forced me to get a bit more organized with my writing, especially with the birth of this new blog.

To this end, I've decided to "outsource" my giveaways to my peers in exchange for free promotion to my 742 followers. Basically I'm just reformatting their giveaway promos for (and forwarding them to) my audience.

So the health scare has turned out to be sort of a blessing in disguise, to the point where I can get some more rest and probably regrow my social butterfly wings :)

It's so weird thinking about it, but I've actually reached the middle of my "active" years... it's been 25 years or so since the dawn of my social life as a teen, and I'm about 25 years away from the average retirement age.

Kinda means that I'm not so old, but not so young either! Oh well, at least I'm still around for my kids and family.

In summary, like it or not, aging is an inescapable part of life.

In fact, life and aging are 2 sides of the same coin since we age as we live and live in order to grow old.

The only way to truly and permanently escape or end aging is to embrace that dreaded "D" word... so let's just leave things as is, shall we? :)


Donna's Glorious GiveawaysLast Week On Donna's Glorious Giveaways:
DGG Has Big News For Giveaway Lovers And Organizers


Wishing you good health and a most graceful aging journey

Donna


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National Institutes Of Health
 
Web MD
 
Dr Koop

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