I suppose it has always been this way: scattered brushfires, each one manageable until you let it burn for too long. The difference is that now, at 60-plus, our capacity, our bandwidth, has narrowed so much that even life’s normal share of whack-a-mole can leave us drained.

It’s worse for Charlotte than it is for me. Her capacity is greater than mine these days, but she also has both aging parents to think about and care for. I can’t imagine how badly I would manage if my parents had survived their tumultuous, self-destructive lives.

They died too young, but I can’t pretend that looking after them in old age would have been simple. My mother would have turned 95 this year, my father 105.

A different kind of milestone: as of 2026, I’ve been writing this blog for twenty years. It began in 2006, when we rented a house in Palma de Mallorca for six months.

At the time, I was commuting to the Swedish headquarters of a global furniture company, where my consulting work revolved around an endless variety of communication projects, some more interesting than others.

Like everyone else consulting there, I played the game as best I could, grateful for the money but under no illusions about how ridiculous it all was. “Donald Duck money,” one cynical colleague called the frivolous way the company spent so much of its enormous cash flow on mostly meaningless projects that seemed more focused on keeping all its consultants busy rather than accomplishing something tangible and valuable.

My blog was the perfect place to vent some of my frustrations and free myself from the constraints of the corporate soldier which I felt I, too, was slowly becoming with not a little self-loathing as a consequence.

Back to the battles.

Early this morning, at the gym, I had the first small battle of the day. After a 40-minute treadmill run, I moved on from cardio to build muscle – or at least try to maintain some of my diminishing strength. A young woman had claimed two different machines at once, one of which I wanted to use.

Her water bottle was on one of the machines while she was pumping iron on the other. In a small act of protest, I just sat down at the one with her water bottle and placed it firmly, almost demonstrably on the floor.

I knew she would react to my touching her property. And of course, she did, giving me a sour grimace before walking over to explain that she was still in the middle of her set.

I pointed out that occupying two machines at once wasn’t okay. She smiled and, somewhat to my surprise, immediately conceded the point. And just like that, Thursday’s first battle was over before it had even really begun.