Construction projects have been of interest to me for years.
I like to watch them.
In spring of
2009, work began on a new student services and classroom building on the east
bank of the Mississippi River, just behind and below the walkway behind my own
workplace; I could stand at a wall and look down and over a street into the new
gaping hole where a structure had been just weeks before. Good times. This is
where I began taking my morning breaks.
As they rearranged the earth and moved in a sky-high crane
to maneuver in the limited space, I watched daily while swarms of yellow-pinneyed
people and dodging bobcats and huge trucks built structures, poured
foundations, moved mountains of supplies, raised pillars, and gradually created
solid order out of mass confusion right before my eyes.
At that time I was struggling with how to approach the last
part of my life, and struggling as well with finding the motivation to care in
the face of what felt like overwhelming confusion and chaos. Friends and family
were becoming sick or dying, age was rearing its ugly head all around me. I
knew personal choices were going to be required but they all just kept going
around and around in my head. I could just work out my time and retire like
anyone, but I was thinking that not having goals for the next 20 or more years
might get real old real fast. I
don’t like golf. I am not much interested in giving away more of my time: I
did a whole bunch of that when I was a stay-at-home mother and entrepreneurial
artist, and even more trying to get a second contracting career off the ground in
my midyears. Even traveling, which I love, would have financial limits in such
a retirement and my partner is not interested.
On the other hand, I could retire to any of the creative
activities I had developed in earlier years, finally becoming a good fine
artist or prolific bookmaker or a writer or a volunteer archaeologist (butcher,
baker, candlestick maker)–the choices made my head spin. I must be REALLY old to have done all
that stuff! Then, I was offered an
opportunity at my workplace to take an even more intense job designed for my
own skills–a chance to grow some career into what is basically an
administrative and not creative worklife, and I would not be forced to retire no
matter what. What to do????
I began thinking that lives, like buildings, need
foundations and carefully planned structure. Soon I started playing a game with myself by trying to think
what things I would need in the foundation of a future planned existence, and all
summer as the crew below me poured basement walls and put up supporting
pillars, I thought through what I would need to support each of the life
scenarios I was considering. I discovered that at the basement level, each scenario
required the same things, that common to all forward motion in my life are the
things most important to me now: retaining my relationships with family,
assuming joy and finding emotional satisfactions, conducting a life that gives
me personal and intellectual satisfactions, and maintaining my body to the
degree that it does not interfere with my other goals.
The entire process of watching the new building go up became
the analogy that structured my choices for a future that I believe will keep me
positive and interested in living during years that so often produce
pain and bitterness. The
concreteness of the real structure has lent strength to my confidence in my
internal structures, and I think that without this I would not have been able
to sort what was most important to me, choose what I think is best for me,
create the internal fortitude that will realize my bucket list. I emerged
excited about my plan and overwhelmed with the power of personal symbols.
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