Today, Oct. 13, I turn 70. (A self-indulgent retrospective)
And migod, is it weird! For one thing, I've been on DU since 2001 when I was a mere child in my late 50's.
I don't know how well I'm going to be able to handle this (gasp!) growing old business.
It's been an interesting ride, to say the least.
I was born late in the reign of King Franklin & Queen Eleanor, and was of a generation that benefited mightily from the (semi-)enlightened politics of that era. I went through school in an era when education was highly valued, as were teachers (especially when I hit high school just after Sputnik went up and Cold War fears gripped the nation). There was this thing called the National Defense Education Act whereby Congress poured money into the public schools and trusted the schools to use it properly. As far as I could tell, they did. There was no "goals & objectives" nonsense, no "race to the top," but quite a few of my classmates and I went on from our quite rural school system to earn higher degrees and professional careers.
I went through 4 years of college & lost my parents in my senior year (mother at the beginning, father at the end). I was then drafted and did time as a grunt in Vietnam. The war radicalized me, and I came home to return to school and join the antiwar movement. Campaigned for McGovern, and have always been politically involved, including as a minor functionary in the county Democratic Party..
I got a PhD in psych, taught and did research in a series of non-tenure-track and often part-time academic positions until I decided to get off the treadmill, which I did by getting a clinical postdoc position for 2 years & then passing the tests for my shrink license.
Since then I've worked in a psych hospital, in private outpatient clinics, as a field psychologist for Corrections, and, for the last 7 or 8 years, as a forensic psychologist in private practice. I had a coronary bypass in 1992 and was hospitalized for Congestive Heart Failure last February. Since then, I've been slowing down in my practice and re-focusing my attention on figuring out what it is I actually want to do with my remaining time. I'll check in again when I've figured out what those things are.
Yeah, it's been quite a ride.
And thanks for indulging me.
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You've had an interesting life...so far!
Best wishes! 
Interesting times! Let me know when you find out what you want to be when you grow up--I could use some ideas. 
Wishing you many more!
Hope your life decisions are easy. 
My parents never made it to 80 and they and ALL of their siblings had cancer, only one gradparent made it past 80.
Odds not in my favor.
Ich bin tatsächlich im Rheinland. I live in a pretty medieval town outside of Düsseldorf. This is one of my neighbors:
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I hope you have a very happy birthday and that your '70s are a great decade for you.
