evidence: Old people have falls. I had only just turned 52 one week before the September evening I collapsed. But the year from 51 to 52 had been a remarkably bad one. I gambled on a job I wanted, as the editor-in-chief of a small magazine, and it ran out of funding. I sent applications to other publications and got thoughtful rejections. I sent more applications, and they went unanswered. I made an appeal for paid subscriptions at a newsletter I’d been writing. Its revenue flattened out at about 20 percent of my share of our living expenses. The household finances began to drain.