Nailed a Retread to my Feet – Again

It’s a little harder to get excited when it is the umpteenth time around, but the bones are there. The intention is there, and the insights will come. I know how to do this and it should be simply elegant.

Because the alternative is not an option.

I have been recovering from an expensive failure since Christmas. Not for the first time, hardly, but for the first time as a senior. I must now be more careful with my physical resources, get enough sleep, keep exercised, energy I can no longer take for granted. Just as important, Silver Fox and my other friends are mostly retired, and the pace around me has slackened. Relax. Take your time. And so, without complaint and with some relief, I have subsided from forward-looking focus into the busy-ness of the familiar. Floated my thoughts on plans for the garden, sorted anxieties with the contents of my closets, and opted for lubricated conversation at every opportunity.  Porch-sitting has become a specialty.

For my entire life, “learning lessons” has been all about discovering what I DON’T want. It has been a process of elimination, and now that I am in my third stage, I no longer have the time or the temperament to waste on experiments.

But as those thoughts float away into the distance, uncoordinated and unremarked, I can feel my temperature rising with them. I really don’t like not having a plan, and boredom pisses me off.

So I pray for better weather and embark again on a plan for my future. Focus forward, I am still standing. This time I am basing all my choices on personal satisfactions so that there will be nothing to fail at, nothing to ever get over again. This time I am going to just have fun.