Returning in 2026
Limping back into writing after a couple weeks off
I took a bit of a break from Substack over the holidays. Thanks for the notes (and new subscriptions!) that motivated me to return to writing about what a retired guy actually thinks about! To bring you up to speed on my last couple of weeks, I figured I’d do a bit of a medley here with a “top 10” list.
1. Feeling “beige”
I’ve written before about how using Ozempic for diabetes management didn’t make me lose weight but affected my motivation to do new things. While I wrote about this phenomenon on Medium (friend link here), I particularly resonated with the narrative in an article forwarded to me from New York Magazine titled “Life in Beige” (Apple News link here).
“The drugs work — users report fewer cravings and less food noise. But unexpectedly, by altering their desire for food, some people say they’ve lost their desire for everything else, and what’s left is a long-lasting state of meh, bleh, numb, flat, take-it-or-leave-it.”
Even though the holiday season involved a New Year celebration, it was hard to get excited about the festivities, motivate myself to pack for a roadtrip, or even figure out how to find a time to write when away from my normal routine.
2. Disease progression
Speaking of Ozempic, my diabetes numbers are under control. In December, I visited my endocrinologist, and my A1C was 6.1, well within my target range. The great news is that Ozempic is doing its thing to keep my blood sugar under control. The bad news is I also saw my nephrologist in December, and my kidney numbers aren’t so good (eGFR of 15). I’m basically at ESRD (end-stage renal disease). I’ve started my dialysis education now, and I’ve been referred to the transplant process. I go in on February 3rd for my big evaluation appointment for transplant, which includes blood testing, cardiac stress testing, psych eval, social work, and more. I’ll let you all know how this goes!
3. Emotions on year-end taxes
As a retired person, I don’t have W-2 income and withholdings, so all the cash flows come in from consulting, direct private lending, and investment activity where taxes are not withheld. I just paid my estimated taxes (due January 15th), and I felt really differently this year. While I’m OK with paying Oregon, Multnomah County, and Portland Metro taxes, I was not feeling great about giving money to the Federal Government right now, particularly with the “sphere of influence” actions going on with Venezuela and the ICE shootings, both in Minnesota and even here in Portland.
I’ve actually never been one to hate the government. I would simply prefer that tax dollars go toward public health & disease control, basic research, environmental protection, weather & climate services, infrastructure, disaster recovery, and consumer protection. I understand that the government needs to balance budgets. So why are we spending so much on military operations in Venezuela that haven’t been approved by Congress? And why are we spending so much on ICE? It frustrates me when our tax dollars go towards efforts that are both unpopular and most likely illegal.
4. Emotions as a whole
Those of you who have followed my Substack know that I’ve been reflecting on my therapy journey. I’ve hit an interesting crossroads. While my early therapy work focused on how I can improve my behavior in managing relationships with others, the real work now is what I actually want to explore for myself. This is a bigger topic. Given that my therapist knows I like to write to process thoughts, she has given me a writing assignment I’m really struggling with. (Separately, I don’t believe I can publish any of that work here, as so many of my experiences have been shaped by my interactions in the world, and I try not to violate anyone else’s privacy—other than Marsha’s and mine—in this space.)
5. Anxiety about the “end of empires”
Marsha often jokes that I must have spent a previous life in Atlantis because I’m good at math, embrace technology, and like Mediterranean food. Personally, the reason I think she may be on to something is that I have a particular set of phobias about the end of empires. Atlantis, after all, was supposedly an advanced civilization that met a catastrophic end. As I’ve watched the ongoing buildup of federal debt, the escalating division inside the country, and military overreach, my fears about the end of this age in America have grown. Our inability to adapt to energy as a technology (solar, wind, nuclear) and our continued geopolitical games for fossil fuels, like we are currently pursuing with Venezuela, simply amplify these fears. One thing I’ve always hated about the Monte Carlo simulations in financial plans is that we’re supposed to feel “good” passing 80 percent of the scenarios. Whenever I ask what kinds of scenarios the other 20 percent represent, the answer is always something like “the end of empires.” Aren’t we there yet?
6. Family time
Anxiety about bigger picture issues aside, we got to see our kids at year-end! It was fun to reunite as a family! Rather than taking separate photos in the pre-Christmas rush while we’re all apart, we changed our holiday card strategy to send after the holidays so we can all be in the photos together. For those who aren’t on the spam list, here’s a link to an online version of our holiday greeting!
7. Frustrations running websites myself
I really appreciate Substack because I am a bit tired of running my own legacy website where I host those old holiday greetings. The latest update from PHP 8.1 to PHP 8.4 broke both a WordPress plug-in on my website and my URL shortener. It took time for me to debug the issues in order to avoid a PHP 8.1 extended support plan which was annoyingly going to cost me $7.81 per month for basically a site that gets used once per year!
For those who wonder why I did this site to begin with, it’s because our original family website back in 1997 was done on AOL, and that site ultimately went away as the popularity of that service waned. To protect ourselves from further obsolescence, I set up our own website, and it currently hosts our holiday greetings (and other family news) all the way back from 2004. In 2016, our kids made us put archived content from their childhoods behind a password. (The currently visible posts have been approved by “corporate.”)
I’ll likely keep this all in maintenance mode, as I’m no longer really touching the sites I manage myself (paos.us, time-restricted.com, hillwork.us). My new stuff is all here on Substack.
8. Mentorship
Marsha and I are finding ourselves returning to our role as parents in doing some mentoring. What’s funny is that when our kids were in college and later grad school, the decisions they faced were more influenced by their environments. In this life phase after school, we’re seeing a shift in our conversations toward navigating life’s normal challenges. We are excited by our older daughter’s engagement, and we love her fiancé! Still, Marsha and I learned in our own early marriage counseling that the two most common issues every couple has to go through are about money and families-of-origin. We appreciated the ability to reassure our daughter that the topics she was asking us about are totally good and normal for this phase of life!
9. Old stuff
Of course, it’s tough to talk about life phases without the question of what to do with old stuff. Both our kids went East for undergrad, leaving behind their childhood stuff with us. Then, they both did Master’s degrees in the UK, leaving behind their undergrad stuff with us. Our younger daughter took a minimal set of stuff with her to Chicago to start her first job. Our older daughter took a minimal set of stuff with her to study at Princeton. This holiday season, both of them spent effort going through the old stuff they wanted to transport into their new phases of life!
It’s funny to me how much time we spend caring for the stuff we’ve lived without for years! I picked up the scanning of some old photos for both daughters and was humored by how much effort it was just to save a little bit of space. Still, there are some gems in there! Again, I won’t post them here because they aren’t approved by “corporate.”
10. Some tropes on relationships in movies don’t age well
We spent the New Year’s holiday at Marsha’s family home in Bellevue with her brother. In that home, they still have cable TV. (We cut the cord in the Pao household a long time ago.) On TV one night was the movie Big. Watching it again 37 years later was a disappointment. There were many plot elements that just didn’t age well. One example was the depiction of the workplace where the leading lady Susan was openly sleeping around the office, as exposed in the breakup scene with Paul:
“He’s just another link in the chain! First it was Tom Caulfield, then Handlen. Then Golding, then me! Am I missing somebody?”
Of course, when I watched this movie, I really didn’t think about the implications of dating someone in the workplace. After all, I was in college, and students were hooking up with each other all the time. Even in my first job at Oracle, there was a lot of dating inside the company. Times have changed.
Those are just some of the issues that I’ve been thinking about over the last couple of weeks. Maybe these are fodder for some offline conversations we’ll have? I’d be interested in hearing from you!