Monthly Archives: January, 2017

New Year’s Day 2017

Not sure what I want to write, but I wanted to write something that is not just in my notebooks.  This blog stuff may be out there forever, and who knows what will happen to my notebooks when I’m gone.  Not sure my family will place the same value on my words that I do.  And they don’t have to.  They have their own lives, I know that.  My notebooks have a whole other life written in them.  Don’t know what it would take to have someone…do something with them.  I can barely do something with them myself.

Mine is a pretty plain blog…obviously.  I know there are ways to fix them up, but so far, I haven’t been in to that.  Not sure what I’ll do should I ever get the chance to really have the free time I dreamed of in a retirement setting.  So far, it ain’t happening.

And my cozy place…I was thinking today that my place is not quite what I want to work in.  It needs to be cozier.  I’d really like to have my chair in here and a table beside it to place my things on…and a way to shut it off from passers by so that nothing would be disturbed.  And the dogs.  The dogs are not a problem except in their…messes…their shedding and their dustiness…and their general disarray.  But then again, my stuff is pretty much in disarray as well.  I think I’d like to have more space to spread out so I don’t have to dig each time I want something…but I am happy to have this space at all.  And the dogs kind of like having me here.  They’ll come up once in a while and get some petting or scratching, and then go back to their beds and be content.  They are relatively content on just having a home.  We could learn from them.

The biggest change that has happened in my life in the past year is the loss of job…now turned in to at least semi retirement, if not full retirement.  The pertinent factor there is money.  Can we be satisfied with the money we will have available to us…or will we need more to fulfill our dreams.

Our dreams!?!?  Yes!  Our life doesn’t stop here as we just try to keep ourselves busy in retirement.  No!  I have a lot to do!  And I know she does too.  What we still have to do is to find a way to fit it all in…as our bodies continue to age…   So maybe this is about re-thinking my dreams, and making them more solid so that I can keep them in front of me and continue to keep them in my vision at all times.  Mostly, they are already there.  Witness the uneasiness I feel when I am not doing anything constructive.  I really don’t know what people think about as they look at retirement.  Perhaps we can get a discussion going with that.  I’m sure taking the pressure off of going to that day to day job must be a common theme.  I know that I feel very good about that.  I haven’t had time yet to focus on the many things I want to do…but I have gotten that going to work every day out of my life so that I have more room for everything else.  I like that.

The elimination of that daily job and the pressure and the struggles and the worry that went with it are the biggest change in 2016, but there are other changes also.  I like to think, that as my time spent with my wife becomes more and more, that we, our relationship will evolve and mature in to a much better one.  I believe we are already seeing that.  Just getting on the same page as to how we want me to work or not work, has been helpful.  All the years spent doing all the life things, like working, and raising a family, and creating a home, can come together into a much better life for both of us…as we grow together.

Another big change in our life has been the absence of must parent figures.  We are down to only one.  For her, her mother.  For me, mother in law.  We spend more time with her, and she finally seems to be coming more out of the protective shell that she crawled into when her husband and companion of almost 40 years passed away.  As she should.  Life is ever changing, and we have to change with it.  Can’t hold on to something that is no  longer there.  The past is only memories now.

Perhaps that is the biggest value of the changing of the calendar every 365 days.  A time to start anew.  A time to set the past behind us and move on to the future.  While the earth revolves around the sun every 365 days, the calendar is still just an arbitrary means of noting the passing of time.  Day to night.  Night to day.  Month to new month.  January 1 to December 31.  All just ways we mark time.  Ways that we can turn the page and start over.  Each day a new page in our lives.  Each year, the passing of our age from one number to the next…until we inevitably die…and life goes on.

There is always that question about what goes on for us as individuals when we die.  For everyone else, indeed, life goes on.  But what about the one who passes?  I think that no one really has the answer to that.  The only thing for sure…is that our body is no longer here.  Many will swear that the spirit of the departed is still with us.  And I believe that they are correct.  If you keep that spirit with you, it will indeed remain.  If you let it go…you may be surprised to find that the spirit of the deceased will still pop up in your life from time to time…unbidden…and maybe even un-desired.  It is times like those that you have to wonder if life does indeed go on after death.  Of course not in the same way, but…in some way that we do not…can not understand.  All that we are aware of is part of life.  So as long as we are aware, life is there.

Oh, no sense getting so philosophical!  Everyone has there own ideas to keep them going with whatever life has to throw at them.  Even death.

But let’s not end it there.  This is about the New Year.  The New Starting Point for tomorrow.  The time to leave last year where it belongs.  Sure, learn from the past, but don’t hang your hat on it.  The present is where its at.  As today becomes tomorrow, tomorrow becomes today as we arrive on its doorstep.  As the New Year arrives..it become the present.  And here we are.

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