On Creating Agebuzz By Connie Zuckerman

A few months ago I turned 58 years old. Old to some. Young to others. It is what it is. It is what you make of it.

My children are out of the house. My parents and in-laws, while overall in good health, are in their late 80s and now much more limited in how they live their lives. I myself am now a grandparent. With my own parents we weave and dodge to avoid catastrophes, and we thank ourselves for the near misses while not quite visualizing the coming reality. We are all getting older- some of us sooner than others. While none of us can avoid aging, some of us prefer denial. For me, that doesn’t feel right. I know too much to avoid this conversation. For myself and for my loved ones, I need to be thinking and talking about this.

Aging is something we have always faced, if not always embraced the consequences. We watch our children, parents, friends, and family move forward along the chronological beam. And we try to position ourselves along that beam with the best balance we can muster. Sometimes we fall down and we learn from those mistakes. Sometimes we succeed and feel like masters of our fate. We never really know what life is going to throw at us- but we can think about what may be ahead and try to find the right path forward.

agebuzz is an idea I’ve been thinking about for a while. I feel myself getting a bit older every day. Some days my knees hurt, some days my clothes are a little more snug than I’d like. I also see my parents, friends, and family aging right along with me. Sometimes I have good ideas to offer as help- and sometimes I search out as best I can what resources are out there- for them and for me…and sometimes I just find it mind-boggling to grasp how much info is out there, how many possible good ideas I’ve yet to discover and how much learning and sharing information makes life better. And thus the idea of agebuzz was born.

This is the goal: Create one place to share good, reliable information and expertise, to share products and helpful resources, and to share personal experiences and consequences. One place where ideas and information about aging can be curated and created and trusted and relied upon. Where we can learn from our loved ones while thinking about ourselves. We each have much to share and much more to learn. As we watch our parents age, we can learn what makes sense, for them and for ourselves. Who among us hasn’t heard or said, “if I only knew then what I know now.” Well, perhaps there are some lessons to be learned from caring for our seniors that we can also apply to ourselves as we get older. It’s a goal worth pursuing. And that’s why we’re creating agebuzz.