The Grumpy Podcast
My Very Last Life
Grumpy’s most personal of podcasts –
After turning 60, he looks back upon his life and decides to start over – he’s got another 20 good years, that is enough to live an entire … but how?
First Question I Would Ask
Is That Whiskey?
It’s a fair question.
Like a lot of men and women out there, I became what I was taught to become. Whatever it is I am – if there is such a thing as a “true self” – is hidden beneath layers of trying to be what I am supposed to be.
And so, at the end of a hard week, I reward myself with a glass of whiskey and try to burrow past all the layers of daytime Eric to the real me. Then I try not to drink so much that I won’t recognize me when I find me.
The whiskey is a simple Jack Daniels. Not a great bourbon, but one I can stretch with about 80% water so I don’t end up driving too much. If you’re asking about my favorite whiskey, it’s a Scotch and yes, it’s Lagavulin, with Springbank and Highland Park coming in a close 2nd and 3rd.
The more I talk to other men my age, the more I realize how common depression is as a kind of constant soundtrack in life.
Maybe women have this too – but I think especially men have a feeling late in life that it’s over, that life has been taken from them, that they are no longer necessary or particularly wanted, and they can’t do anything about it.
Yes, I guess that is a form of mild depression that you really can’t do anything about.
But I want to do something about it. That’s why I’m making this podcast – to find a way out of it, to find a way to make this last life matter.