Is it me?

November 18, 2025

Start Date: October 17, 2025

Is it me? I am in the age bracket for cognitive decline, but I hope not yet dementia. Hard to tell.

There are the names and words that seem to be gone without clues. Worse seems to be the attention deficit. Where are things? Did I lock the door, turn off the oven, pay the power bill?

I know I didn’t seem to have these issues 30 years ago.

But then, I didn’t have this “stuff” decades ago.

At 30 I had 2-3 monthly bills: rent, utilities, and the phone. I had perhaps one password for a computer at grad school. You may think life is better now but it is definitely less straightforward.

I have a page or more of IDs and passwords. The pharmacy renewal has to go through a website and then a text to a physician, at which point some database often decides that the Rx has expired. The doctor resubmits and then I am told by a pharmacy message that it is too soon for the new one. As the CVS technician said, ”The system has issues. I won’t defend them.”

I have people who help in the house and yard because of a combination of laziness and age. I have two exterminators. Apparently in CA rats and gophers (both ubiquitous here) are on different licenses.

Before retirement I had one health insurance plan/card. Now I have A and B and supplemental and D. One had billed quarterly to some account and now does so monthly, requiring online payment by credit. One is monthly to a bank. One is roughly annual. One changes its premium mid-year on the month after my birthday. Changing providers can be done in the quarter before the end of the calendar month. I have given up finding the best deal. They never seem to quite live up. It is too much. I surrender.

Then there are the taxes. The income tax was once deducted from a pay deposit. Now I pay quarterlies. But they aren’t in fact quarters. The intervals are 3 months, then, 2 months then 3 months, then 4 months. No reminders other than a note on a calendar.

I do receive my property tax bill in the mail. In Los Angeles you pay twice per year. That would be fine if they billed you twice. They do not. They send two statements at once. I can think of no earthly reason why. But somewhere from late September to early October you will receive a bill due in November/December and one that is due in April. IT ISN’T EVEN THE SAME CALENDAR YEAR!. So it stays on the table with other piles until you get your calendar for the next year.

I am rare to have minimal credit and debit cards but I do have multiple financial accounts, institutions, and statements.

Then there are the other insurances. I received my bill for the auto. It had doubled? Were they billing for the entire year instead of just six months? No. They had the wrong car, wrong coverage, wrong mileage, and wrong policy, but somehow assigned it to me. I found someone to speak with. She was helpful and told me that it will be weeks for “corporate” to straighten it out. I assume these aren’t done by hand anymore so it is hard to fathom how they achieved this. But yet another thing to keep on the table as a reminder to check into until corrections are made.

The house insurance was almost 50% more, but it is accurate. It seems that CA’s unwillingness to thin forests, clear brush, put water in reservoirs, repair fire trucks, maintain staff, and as we are now told, to allow firefighters to put the fires completely out, makes for massive fiscal risk. If the statement doesn’t say “CANCELLED” you sign over whatever they ask.

So, all of the confusion. Is it me? Yes and No.

I just stumbled onto a charming essay by Joseph Epstein on the The Free Press [1]. His belief is that “the more things change, the more things … change” and he seems none to happy about it. He speaks of computer “shortcuts” that seem to be long cuts and shares my affinity for a car with a key that can be copied at a hardware store.

But while my car has a decade on his, he has roughly two decades of existence on me.

So perhaps I am deteriorating ahead of schedule. Or maybe it is just the era we live in.