I am astonished to look back and realise I last worked at the end of July. I know I’ve done a lot but how the heck have so many weeks smoothly glided me by? The days tend to merge. It’s been good but I’m ready to work again. It will come. I’m looking.
As one of my non-paid-work friends said to me – “At first, the hours go fast. Then the days tend to merge, then the weeks, then the months.” I’ve certainly found this to be true.
It’s not a bad thing, but it is very true that my output of creativity has reduced now that I don’t have to squeeze it in. On the other hand, my capacity for reflection and relaxation and just chilling has increased. I have literally NEVER been so chill and I find I love it.
I happened to be at dinner with a bunch of retired baby boomers the other night and they were all telling me with glee they loved being retired. They are all chill and all content.
I have another 20 years of working before I can retire officially, though if I can fund myself early I will certainly do it.
I’ve been forced to come up with a little checklist of things that I MUST do at least a bit of every day in order to get traction and movement on things. In this i have included
- Job (as in, job hunting tasks)
- Write (what counts: blog, poem, book, ideas)
- Art/create/build (paint, craft, create, maintain, something physical)
- Exercise (5 times a week mandatory)
- Read something new (as well as the old books)
- Chores (cook clean etc)
So far so good.
Now. Some random things that have amused me that have made my day:
The coffee machine was being weird so I popped it open to clean it. I guess I found my problem, but I’m unsure how any of that happened.
The coffee machine was not functioning, thought i’d open it up to see why.
I noticed that fraggles are back – the shopping strip where i go to the supermarket had a ‘claw’ machine for them which took me aback, but I totally approve. I was utterly obsessed by the fraggles in the mid 80s. I got hold of the DVDs recently and…not so good as an adult. All the things that as a kid I loved meant nothing to me.
The personalities of the fraggles were a good thing to grow up on. I did rather like the Wembly/Boober relationship of manic and depressive , I liked that they were shown as a unit, too. Mokey was the hippie and very into social justice, Red was impetuous and hasty, and Gobo was a weird combination of curious and incredibly stupid, aping his Uncle and happy to be a risk taker. Always liked the old guy in the shed too, clearly HE was a retiree!
it seems fraggles are back
Another thing that happened was we went to dinner with friends and partner rushed in randomly to an eatery that was also a distillery, Anther Spirits. Very odd behavior on his part, I followed him in to find him happily talking to staff about their gin, also very odd behavior on his part as he dislikes gin.. Turned out he knew the distiller, they worked in the microbiology labs together while he was doing his PHD, and he knew she’d left to make gin – he got me a bottle. I approve. The gin is really nice, which is good or I’d not give it a plug. I do like gin, the more intense the better.
Anther Gin which i have to say is awesome
I’ve decided where to go with doing jewellery, coming up in the next post. One of the things I thought i needed to do was David Bowie earrings. Decided to distill some designs for that. He’s very recognizable without much information, isn’t he?
Reducing all the David Bowies to his simplest formTime
Finally, my oldest cat is now 18 and she’s a giant bag of skin, bones, purring, and loud meowing demands. I adore her and indulge her. I’ve never had a cat get past 16 or so. All prior cats have gone downhill very fast when it’s their time, I’ve never had an old-lady cat before. I will miss her greatly, she’s been my companion for so long. She has moments of low energy and I think ‘this is it’ and then she rallies again.
