The older I get, the more I think about getting older.

I try to avoid those thoughts. I gave up celebrating my birthday decades ago. I get embarrassed when the nurses ask me for my birthdate. I think people who say, “Age is just a number,” are a lot younger than me. I keep my blood pressure down by avoiding attorneys and doctors, because they never have any good news.

But the facts are I am a day older today than I was yesterday, and, tomorrow, I will be older than today. So, if I have any sense at all, I need to open my eyes and appreciate it more before it’s all gone.

Take the boat, for example.

Didn’t I just put that in Hubbard Lake a few weeks ago, when it was spring? Nope, because I took it out this Sunday, and, now, it’s under its winter shrinkwrap.

Then there’s golf, in which the balls don’t go as far as they did last year, and the holes keep getting farther away.

It’s all so depressing, because the aging signs are all around me.

Then the real eye-opener: the grandkids.

All but one have all outgrown the grandpa “pull my finger” trick. Two are in college, one in high school, one in junior high, and one in elementary school. Sometimes, I just want to grab the hands of the clock and snap them off so the grandkids stay little forever, but, then, there are times I need help with my computer, and I’m glad they know what the heck to do.

And my own two children — if I can call a 45- and 48-year-old children … How does that happen? One day, you are changing their diapers, and, the next, they will be offering to change mine.

So what exactly is happening to me this fall?

It begins with losing too many loved ones this year. Songs my heavenly wife, Josie, and I used to enjoy on the radio now bring tears to my eyes. Weekly, I see Facebook messages about the death of a classmate or a dear friend.

I often wonder why I am still here and so many in my life are not.

Is that a curse or a blessing?

I think, for me, I am lucky I can still think rationally about the time I have left.

My uncle, my father, and my sister all left this world in an Alzheimer’s care home unit, not knowing who they were or who I was.

There is no doubt I have less in front of me than what is behind me, so why not take these thoughts of mortality and turn them into something positive?

I remain curious. A life in the newspaper business does that to you, so I want to continue to learn. I worry and write a lot about our country, our debt, and our increasingly unaffordable American Dream, so I will continue to write about what’s on my mind and I will challenge our politicians’ patience by writing and calling their offices on a weekly basis (and you should, too, if we want to force meaningful change).

I am going to teach my grandsons how to play golf and shoot clay pigeons. This winter, I am going to strengthen my shoulder so I can throw more footballs to them. I am going to babysit more so my daughter and her husband can go out to dinner by themselves. And Buddy, my lab, and I are going to go on a walk every day, not just the ones I choose, because he wants to go every day.

So what else can I add to my to-do list while I still have some “to-do” time left?

Oh, I know. I am going to vote, and I am going to write about the importance of our vote.

I will tell you whom I am going to vote for. Or should I say whom I am not going to vote for?

Right now, with a Congress that ignores us, ignores the major issues of our time, remains focused on party over country, and concentrates mostly on getting reelected, I am not voting for a single federal incumbent. They are spending my grandchildren’s future, and that makes grandfathers mad.

Some will say I am wasting my vote. I say voting for the incumbent is wasting your vote.

I have tried that, and it isn’t working. It’s my vote, and they haven’t earned nor deserve it.

Show me they can balance a checkbook, and then maybe we can talk about it.

Go ahead, call me old-fashioned. It is a compliment.

What’s on your mind this week? Let me know at gregawtry@awtry.com.

Greg Awtry is the former publisher of the Scottsbluff (Neb.) Star-Herald and Nebraska’s York News-Times. He is now retired and living in Hubbard Lake. Greg can be contacted at gregawtry@awtry.com.