AUGUST 6, 2026 – Today marks my last day as a 71-year-old. Reciting such a banal fact allows me to join the dull chorus of Boomers who, in conjunction with citing their age, just can’t resist saying, “I can’t believe I’m . . .” No, I won’t complete the sentence. Instead, I’ll throw a contrarian’s curve ball and say, “On the threshold of turning 72, I’m going to celebrate by starting a new project.”
By new project, I mean something by which to jump-start the day and sharpen my edge; something I can deploy to temper the adverse effects of a multi-dimensional restructuring of America. In many ways, practicing law helps me toward my objectives, but if this line of work helps slow the aging process, it doesn’t reverse it. I need to pursue an endeavor that will make me think and feel younger, not give the appearance that I’ve lost my marbles. Taking up sky-diving or mountaineering on the Top 10 of the Himalayas, would be examples of someone who’s lost his mind.
My wife would say, “How about something productive, such as [fixing this or cleaning out that]?”
Whereupon, I’d say, “But that wouldn’t be nearly as fun.”
“But who says it has to be fun?” she’d say. She’d have a valid point, except, most of my obsessive-compulsive projects in life haven’t been of a sort that involve “fixing” or “cleaning.” The common theme across my projects is the intrinsic value of the project themselves, not necessarily the results they produce, which might be no more mentionable than an “Honorable Mention” ribbon that gets buried in a closet somewhere and rediscovered only in the midst of “down-sizing.”
But what sort of project would meet my requirements as I await the countdown to Birthday No. 72?
Earlier this week, I sent a picture of my model sailboats to my three sisters, who were gathered at our family’s place overlooking Hamburg Cove in Connecticut, where, coincidentally, a small marina of ocean-going vessels fills out the canvas of the artist’s dream. None of my sisters is a sailor, but given the nautical theme of their surroundings, I thought they’d be amused by my wooden models—rigged with wooden (what else?!) sails—built at a “shipyard” in the Upper Midwest, with the name of an inland lake (“Grindstone Lake”) written in small lettering across the outside of the transom of each make-believe . . . day sailer.
One sister texted back, “You could make kits with pre-cuts to sell for kids’ gifts.”
I wasn’t sure about the “kids’ gifts” part. Without overhauling the design, packaging for the kits would have to say, “For Children Over 50 and under 70”: Anyone under 50 wouldn’t have the patience; anyone over 70 wouldn’t have the requisite life expectancy to finish one of the “pre-cut” wooden sailboats—rigging, painting and name-pennant. I encapsulated these limitations implicitly by texting my sister the following: “I could charge extra for the addendum to the instructions—“How to Swear Like a Sailor During Painting and Assembly.”
I could well have included, “[during] sawing tiny parts and drilling tiny holes on 5/16ths dowels” with “Painting and Assembly.”
In any event, I proceeded with my other affairs of the day and didn’t give the “pre-cut kit” idea any further attention.
The next day, however, while developing a new method of drawing, then cutting the small-scale splashboards for my next set of 10 sailboats, the thought of producing “kits” returned. Except, rather than focusing on assembly and sale of kits per se (or perhaps in addition to them), I considered the concept of a writing project.
I thought about a range of possibilities, including a thin, $10.00-a-copy, tongue-in-cheek “book,” entitled, Swearing Like a Sailor Made Easy. With a sprinkling of humor, it could double as a “how to” book among the other DYI titles at our local arts and craft store. I might sell 50—100 copies, if I included online sales—and net enough to splurge during our next stop at Dairy Queen. But it wouldn’t be about the money. It would be about slowing the aging process.
Or . . . and this is where I realized the “special project” potential . . . I could turn this into a major writing project, leveraging not only the sailing metaphor but deepening and broadening it by way of life’s parallels to the construction of a model wooden sailboat, built from the scraps of an earlier project. And not your typical model wooden sailboat, mind you, but one with wooden sails. Of course, the writing project would include detailed specs and painting/assembly instructions for an actual model, but the heart of the project would be about life—which, as one knows by age 72, if not quite a lot sooner, is filled with infinite rewards and challenges; defeats and successes; love and laughter; tragedies and triumphs; rogue waves and sea as still as glass; and enough drama and poignancy to fuel dozens of episodes of an open-ended Netflix series.
I’m eager to develop further the shape of this project. It’s not something I could’ve written a decade ago or even five years ago. But I’m ready now.
First, however, I need to finish building the next 10 sailboats, for a fleet of 15. Then it will be time for a change of design—especially if the flat-earth society people prevail in November, sending many other boats over the edge.
Stay tuned.
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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson
