I was about the most manually dextrous person I knew; at 40, I could still easily tie a knot in an eyelash, and sometimes i could even manage two. These days if I can tie a knot in a phone cord I consider it a good day. The pain and numbness in my hands has gotten to the point that I often end up doing delicate tasks as much by muscle memory as anything else, like a newly deaf person talking, they can still do ok, but you know it’s going to deteriorate after a while.

I haven’t discovered any possible solutions to my hand issues that don’t involve extraordinarily expensive tests or chancy surgeries, and it doesn’t look like anything is going to change in that respect anytime soon. So I keep at it, and before horribly long, I suspect, I’ll have to leave the ral delicate work for younger hands, or those couple of hours a day when they are at their peak performance.

Getting old is not for pussies. Especially not when you’ve lived a rugged life.