An Amazing Lack of Energy

A few years ago we sat down to watch camcorder videos of our kids as kids. The justification was to embarrass my son Keith in front of his most lovely and exceptional wife Emily.
This was back in the day when camcorders weighed 400 pounds and cut grooves in your shoulder. But that is a story for another place and time.
Being the selfish curmudgeon that I am, I focused on myself instead of my kids. I couldn't believe how much energy I had, how happy I was, how much I joked around in a playful, unselfconscious and goofy and delightful way.
My kids got selfish, grew up and moved out of the house.
The reason I bring that up is that the wife and I just had one of "those" conversations. A conversation where you are more honest about your disappointments and more pointed about what you perceive to be the reasons.
Life sucks energy out of you relentlessly. It is steady, crushing and inevitable.
Few people are happy, few people have what they want, most people are blown away by what their life has become.
Kids supply a supernatural energy. When they are gone life stands right up in your face and you begin to sag.
As Carol and I talked I realized that I just don't have the energy for life's crap any more. The only thing I have energy for is my dream, and any streetwise betting man would bet against it with zero chance of being criticized for doing so.
There is irony in the fact that as your kids leave the house, their energy is high precisely at the point where your energy begins to leak away. But then again, that's how life works.
What I find interesting is that I have been more positive in 2011 and 2012 than I have for decades. And that energy is probably 30% of what it was when my kids were in the house.
Interesting because I have been dazzled by my own attitude over the past two years and really it is nothing compared to the man I was back then.
Life is a vampire, baby. The longer that road stretches out, the less you got to give.
The kids leaving is not really the issue. It is natural, and honestly as a parent you enjoy watching your kids make a life.
I think it is the inexorable battering of time that shrinks you down and makes everything less significant. The kids have been gone for around ten years now. That's ten years of fighting and struggling and sacrificing and aging. As you age, life requires more fight, and your body and mind have less reserves to dip into to give you a fighting chance.
I am tired of fighting, I am tired of justifying myself. Hunter S. Thompson said "Never apologize, never explain." That makes perfect sense to me at age 58.
I am aware that I have an amazing lack of energy for anything that does not feed directly into my soul and my psyche.
Given the fact that my perspective is warped by most peoples' standards, I am rapidly running out of energy to engage in any activity that most people would consider normal. Expected. The right thing to do.
All of these things waste my time and suck life and energy out of my presence here on earth.
You get to that point in your life where you are compelled to fight for the things that mean the most to you, and you have less energy than you have ever had before.
A conversation. Another conversation.
A delicate balance between accomplishing something and sucking a little more energy out of your embattled soul.