If you aren't able to reinvent yourself through the years of your life, you will become obsolete.  The world changes so fast anymore that it is very difficult to keep up.  And as you age, you really don't want to keep up.  You are tired of all the changes.

When I was growing up, people fixed things.  They repaired things when they broke.  That rarely happens anymore.  It's cheaper to buy a new thing most of the time.  Especially when you look at the cost of repair.  None of us know how to fix things anymore.

When I was growing up, every man in the family knew how to fix broken things.  But the things we had, the things we owned, weren't that complicated.  Now things are so intricate, you can't cope.  

Everyone I knew when I was growing up fixed cars when they broke down.  "Pop the hood," was a common phrase when you broke down on the road.  And everyone broke down on the road.  But cars were simple back then.  No bells, no whistles.  No air-conditioning.  You rolled the windows down if you were hot.

My toaster broke recently.  I bought a new one for twelve dollars.  My dryer went kaput.  I got a new one.  I had to pay a repairman seventy-five dollars to tell me it would cost over three hundred dollars to repair it.  I was out the seventy-five dollars with nothing to show for it.

And everything is digital.  I like to never learned what that meant.  Digital??  I'm not sure I know what it means even now.  Except that it means I don't have to wind up an alarm clock anymore--I threw the wind up clock in the trash.  Obsolete.  Almost everything that breaks anymore is obsolete anyway.

I think I'm obsolete.