I know, I know……..can’t help it, tho. Sorry. Get on a tangent and the words just flow. Sorry. I’ll try to be more brief.

How do I know this (the last blog was too long)? Simple: the comments drop off. No comments means that the topic sucked, the writing sucked or it was too long a read to determine whether it sucked or not. I prefer to go with the latter explanation. Let me cling to that.

‘Course, I just used some of my ‘current blog’s’ words up with that………….

Anyway. Back to building for a sec………

……..if you are 60 or older and thinking of building a cabin off the beaten track, don’t do it! Sal and I started to build when I was around 55. We left it almost too late.

It took us three years – two years of ‘heavy slogging’ and six months on each end ‘starting up’ and ‘finishing off’. We only built 1200 feet officially but we also built a genset shed, a wood shed, a food shed and a lot of deck. Plus a lot of other stuff that doesn’t have ‘shed’ as a suffix.

It was all done ‘one nail at a time’ as Sal succinctly puts it. It was hard. And, to be honest, I could not do it again. Even if I could, I would not.

Think about it…………how long ya got, really? Say you are 63 (as I am) and say that you remain healthy and active (I am workin’ on it) til you are 80. That means that you are stretching physically, mentally and financially for a 17 year stint.

Frankly, the law of diminishing returns starts to enter the picture. Or diminishing lifespan. Take your pick.

Yes, I know there are some who keep chugging along. Sal’s 86 year-old dad will outplay just about anyone I know at badminton and still climbs on the roof all the time to…….well, we think he is fixing things ……. …………….hmmmmm………now I have to wonder why he goes on the roof so much?

Back to the point: if you’ve only got 17 good years left, why spend any of it tempting fate by building?

OK, to be fair, it seemed like a good idea at the time. For us. And it was! AT-THAT-TIME! But, today? Well, today, at 63, I would not build. I’d buy. Ask me again in five years and I’d say, “I’ll rent.”

Yes, I would.

I would buy something that was NOT my dream house and I would then pretend that it was. That is easy enough to do. I’ve rationalized things to that level before. I can still do that. That kind of thinking would save me three years and countless pints of blood both of which are getting in shorter supply as I age.

Hell, I am getting shorter as I age!

Think about it. This is now the age of least resistance. We are no longer irresistible forces and most of our challenges are now immovable. I say, ‘accept that gracefully and buy-already-built or rent’.

But there is a hidden point to all that. Do it! You don’t have to build. You don’t have to ‘go nuts’ but time really is running out. If you have a dream, go for it. Go for it now!

I am glad we did.