Things to do When I’m 50

When I turned 50 last year (2020), I was more shocked than when I turned 40. The average life expectancy for healthy Japanese males is 72.14. That means I only have 20 years left. Therefore I began to do as follows;

Use memorabilia

I have a lot of memorabilia of musicians, video games, manga characters, T-shirts, mugs and old magazines. Until now, I've kept them and never used them because I don't want them to get worn out.

Now I have begun to use them because my body might wear out sooner than the memorabilia.

Get excellent earphones

Your knees, chest, ears and eyes. Different things wear out for different people. As for me, it is my ears. I find myself asking the speaker to repeat what they've said more and more in conversations.

This means that I'm in my final days of being able to listen to music in high-fidelity sound, I think. Therefore I've bought excellent earphones (SONY WH-1000XM3). It makes my favorite music sound even more brilliant. I really enjoy them.

Get a good desk light and computer display

Fortunately, I don't feel any problems with my eyes, except for being near-sighted (since my teenage years) and my aged eyes (since my 40s). Nonetheless, it may be good for my eyes that I have prepared a good desk light and computer display (EIZO EV2460) which is equipped with non-flickering, auto-light volume control.

Using a new desk light and display, I feel it has reduced the tiredness of my eyes when I finish my work in my room. It isn't a dramatic change, but it must be good for the health of my eyes because this change affects me every single day of my life, in particular on these telework days due to COVID-19.

Changing my career

I've been in charge of sales for over 25 years. The work gave me a sense of fulfillment and a lot of time. For example 400 hours overtime per year for my last 10 years of this career. After 45, I feel seriously tired in this work environment. Therefore I consulted with my boss and a manager of the personnel department about this problem and we agreed about changing my career.

My current work involves the management of our fiscal plan and contracts with suppliers. My overtime work is reduced to one fifth compared to when I was a salesman. This situation gives me much more free time.

Organising my room and playing the electric drums

Right around the time of this career change, the coronavirus catastrophe started affecting everything. This had me staying in my room for longer periods of time than ever before. Therefore I organized my room from top to bottom.

It provides not only a clean and neat feeling for me, but also a more free space in my room. I recalled that I once wanted to play drums but I gave up because of little space of my room, so I put an electric drum set in the empty space and I practice playing them every day since February 2021.

Time with my mother

All of the above-mentioned topics are about myself. However, more important topics are the time with my children and parents because they are limited.

Five years ago, I asked my father to visit our family's home town (100 years ago, my grandfather left the town. I had only one opportunity to visit there 40 years ago). My father and I visited the temple which has our ancestors' cemetery and other memorial spots. Two years after the visit, my father died.

I also asked my mother to go to the town where my mother lived until her wedding. She seemed to really enjoy this visit so I made an album of this visit and gave it to her it. Now she told me, "It was a very good memory, thank you my son for asking me to go there. Because of my current old body problems, I can't go there anymore"

Spending time with my children isn't difficult because they live with me, but spending time with my mother who lives far from my house isn't easy.

One of the most important things to do for me in my 50s is to have time with my mother, I think.