Note: Small spoiler re Boyhood movie at the very end.

I read a story on Joey de Villa's blog yesterday about an over-55 community in Florida where people have wild consensual sex all the time. Being over 55 myself I have to say it sounded interesting.

I'm getting ready for something different. I like programming, and I'll keep doing it for sure, as long as my right arm holds up (I'm having pretty radical RSI pain right now). But I'm not trying to change the world, or make a billion dollars. I have no expectation that I can change the world, and no great ideas on how to do it either. And I don't need more money than I have saved, I think. The stock market been berry berry good to me. (You have to be of a certain age to get that joke.)

Anyway the retirement community story said something. They've thought of everything by now. There isn't room to be innovative in lifestyle anymore. Back when I was a kid, that's what we thought we were doing. Creating something new in life. But the hippies are either gone or very old. Did you see what Joni Mitchell says about Bob Dylan? She looks like my grandmother! There's just a cranky old person being cranky. No the hippies didn't really break through in lifestyle. We all got old anyway.

Here's the thing: it's got to be even worse for young people with kids today. That feeling that everything is all figured out. There isn't any need for me to think up anything creative to do with my life. If I try, I just find out that someone thought of it long ago, and it has a price tag. So you look for little ways you can be different. Unfortunately not vaccinating kids turned out to be one of them. It could have been not eating cheese, something harmless. But it was vaccinating kids.

I thought Obama understood this, btw, and had ideas for how to involve all of us in making the world work better. If the US can elect a black president, can't we lead the world in making a difference, as people? Nah, he didn't get any big ideas until Year 6 of his presidency, when it's almost too late. And his big ideas didn't turn out to be very great either. Just that he could be an asshole to the Republicans and they might relate to that, appreciate that, respect that. It was true back at the beginning and he should have been doing that all along. And it would have been nice if each of us had a way to feel our life had meaning, that we were making a difference, and being creative, heard and understood -- by someone, anyone. I think that's the real crisis of our times, in the first world at least.

The mom in Boyhood said it best: "I just thought there would be more."