By the time this gets into print, I’ll be 75.  

If it gets into print and I lived until Wednesday. We won’t find that out until it happens — none of us have a guaranteed contract.  

Not to be morbid or anything, but if a lifetime was a 9-to-5 workday, I’d be at about 4:45, a time when a lot of otherwise pretty good employees start putting their tools away and keeping one eye on the clock. They’ve put in a good day’s work, so they’ll just play a little solitaire and kill what’s left of the time. 

It’s easy to get by with that because, seriously, nobody really expects much out of you here at the end of the day. That’s why you have to be your own supervisor and expect something out of yourself.  

I’m about as busy as I have ever been — and, oddly enough, I’m still doing pretty much what I’ve always done. Obviously, I’m still writing a column for a newspaper, and there doesn’t seem to be any less to think about or comment on now than there was when I was doing it as a child of 45. 

Part of my afternoons is spent these days trying to develop a new cartoon strip with the working title, “Uncle Jake and Junior,” focusing on the Generation Canyon. It is an outgrowth of the “That’s Jake” cartoon I used to do.  

I haven’t gotten over being a teacher yet. I work with kids, usually former students, helping them with the SAT and college admissions essays. Meanwhile, I’m reliving some of the good times in the classroom and revisiting some of the bureaucratic nightmares in a memoir titled “H.I.T. Man” (High Impact Teacher). There are 59 chapters so far, which can be read by going to jakevest@substack.com. It’s available for free, so possibly priced at just about what it’s worth.  

There are also about a thousand cartoons there, and I’m still adding some.   

It’s all work, and I don’t have to do any of it. So why do it? Why start projects at 4:45 when there’s no tomorrow? Why create things that don’t have time to go anywhere?  

Why not just relax?  

Because I love this job. And I plan on putting in a full day.  It makes my “now” just as cheerful as my “then” used to be when I was looking forward to things. And, to the astonishment of some people who haven’t gotten around to getting old yet and who think it is something to dread, I expect my 75^th birthday was just as happy as my 25^th. 

If, indeed, I made it all the way to Wednesday.  

Speaking of starting new things, did I mention I’m also considering a new career writing country music songs? Here’s a lyric for this occasion: 

Getting older’s no cause to give up on yourself,  
There’s no reason for feeling bereft 
It’s not that you don’t still have a bright future 
There just ain’t that much future left.