1. Metrics. One of the things the medicos have had me doing for the last six months is a much more frequent bit of at home tracking. Blood sugar, heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen, everything gets tracked. It’s a fine bit of trivia and something that could theoretically be helpful for them, but all it seems to have done for me is generate a new obsession and a lot of fresh anxiety when a rogue value pops up or I see an unanticipated trend develop. While I don’t dispute the value of knowing a more granular level of detail, I can tell you with certainty that even though I was certainly less healthy six months ago than I am now, I absolutely felt better before I knew any of the specifics.

2. Time. By my calculation, it should be December 29th. Somehow, though, the calendar says it’s February 2nd. That can’t possibly be right, can it? I don’t know exactly the age I was when time started to speed up, but I seem to be noticing it speed by at an almost alarming pace these days. Oddly, it doesn’t make the work days seem any shorter, but the pace of moving from one week to the next is getting quite out of hand. I have no idea how one cuts back on the throttle there, but something must be done.

3. Taxes. I switched my Roth IRA from one institution to another this year. During the transition, I managed to add in about $50 more than is allowable by law. The penalty, if left uncorrected, is something like a 6% fine for every year the extra money remains in the account. It was easy enough to fix with a call to the company who holds the account, but the real absurdity is how little our common Uncle Sam will allow you to put away to grow for untaxed future withdrawals. There are articles posted regularly decrying how the Average American will be woefully unprepared for retirement. It seems to me that one way to get after that issue would be to dramatically increase the amount that people can legally shelter from the long arm of the tax man.