Today started with me examining the wreckage of my latest senior moment. However, the first thing I concluded was that it wasn’t a senior moment. It was just a mistake.
I’ve been worrying about making mistakes recently as i have made a few. I made the same submission to a magazine two days apart last month, forgetting I had already done it. Before that I prepared a submission and forgot to send it, which was a nuisance. Some months before that I sent the same poem to two different editors, which is a bad thing to do as it means writing to withdraw the poem as soon as you know you’ve done it. This is, I’m sure, irritating to the editor and makes me look like an idiot. As I make more and more mistakes, I have begun to worry about my declining mental faculties and wonder about dementia. My mum had Parkinson’s and my dad had dementia. I don’t really want either.
In truth, as you get older you do get a little vaguer, which is why I have a pocket diary. I’m still not sure whether I had long COVID or not, which wouldn’t have helped. Then, as Julia says, I am disorganised and don’t get enough sleep. And I do submit a lot of poems.
Last year I made 78 submissions. This year I have already done 79 and will probably mange 100. It’s not surprising I’m making mistakes. However, I am organising myself better. Apart from cutting out the mistakes this is already allowing me more time to write and, as a result, things are already going better.
Well, until today. I was getting the submission together and called up the magazine’s website, as every magazine seems to have its own requirements. This makes submitting a touch irksome at times (particularly when they change them without telling you) I presume it makes the editing process easier. That seems fair. I have a handful of poems to cope with, they have thousands.
Anyway, when I checked this morning, I found I’d missed the submission date. It was last month, not this month. I presume it was a copying error when I was making the submission plan for the year. That, I think, is actually just a mistake and not a senior moment. And that is where we started.
Tomorrow I will give you my definition of “senior moment”.
Photos are wood turning by Julia – at least she goes from strength to strength in retirement. 🙂
That is an understandable anxiety. How about getting assessed? – even just to reassure you
The wood turning is very splendid. You should get a magnificently decorated coffin when you do eventually go.
I was thinking of going budget for the coffin as it’s basically just expensive firewood. And I am a frugal man.
Yes, the woodturning is looking very professional. I think if I’d done 78 submissions this year I’d probably be very confused without a speadsheet, but then if I had to complete a spreadsheet I wouldn’t have time to do 78 submissions, it’s a quandary.
I’ve never mastered spreadsheets, I just use a table. Of course, another problem is that in the editing, a poem may get a new title, which can throw things out. 🙂
Novels, I imagine, are a bit easier to organise, though my total word count would only add up to a chapter.
When there’s only two novels, aye it’s easier 😂 But I do have a spreadsheet for Amazon rankings of each book. Actually I have spreadsheets for most things 😂
She certainly does! And I think most of us get more vague as we age. Always worrisome to think it might be something more.
That’s my problem – telling the difference between dementia and old age. We once had a client in his late 40s with early onset dementia – he was unpleasant and not actually violent, but very strong, even his full-time paid carer didn’t like him. But he had, according to his wife, been a lovely man for thirty years of marriage. I don’t want to end up like that.
A worry for us all.
Let’s make the most of our remaining sanity then. 🙂 My next project is to practice chutney for next year’s show.