January 12 2012

12th of January already……….and it’s taken me this long to feel ‘back to normal’.  I’ve had my daughter and her son staying, I’ve stayed with my other daughter and her children, I’ve had my grandchildren (plus dog) staying with me AND I’ve managed to find the time to catch up with a couple of good friends.

The grandchildren helped pack away the decorations, we walked along the beach and they spent a while painting on some of my spare canvas. By the time my daughter came to stay I had my newly decorated bedroom ready for her, she was most impressed with my decorating achievements and quite proud to be the first one to sleep in the new room.

I even managed to stay with a friend for a couple of days. We spend one damp and stormy afternoon driving around the glens. It was actually very pleasant in the glens, and beautiful. The colour and light up there at this time of year is quite different to those pleasant sunny scenes you find on calendars. I never find the Christmas holidays much of a ‘holiday’ as such, it’s always a busy time, it tends to be hectic but very enjoyable.

Now every one has gone back to their own homes, I’ve no one staying here and I’m not staying with any one else, so here I am, back to normal, just me, on my own, in my own little flat. Now my house guests have all left I’ve moved myself and my furniture into my new bedroom. My daughters were very practical this Christmas, they bought me vouchers which were used to buy all the finishing touches for my new bedroom, new curtains, a new lamp and a little heater for when the wind is howling and it’s a bit chilly.

I’m back at work, in fact it feels as if I were never away from the place and on my wall at work there is a chart. I made the chart last term but I’ve only just got around to pinning it to the wall. It’s a countdown to retirement chart. I’ve worked out that I have another 14 paydays before retirement and this chart has each payday in a square ready to be crossed off as soon as the pay slip lands on my desk. 14 paydays doesn’t sound very long.

I’m preparing to start decorating again. It’s time to tackle the other bigger room, the one that I was using as a bedroom. That room is my biggest room and will be somewhat of a challenge. Now that my living room is decorated and I’ve moved into the ‘new’ smaller bedroom, the plan is to strip the big room back to plaster, decorate from scratch and use it as a studio. A place where I can store all my painting, drawing and craft equipment and where I can paint without having to clean up and put every thing away after every session. It will also double up as a guest room but that’s ok because most of the time it will just be my studio.
I look forward to retirement but at the same time have become acutely aware of the value of each day.

Every night I realise that one more day of my life is over, it’s a scary thought. Time is something you can’t get back and so even thought I look forward to retirement I want to find a way to value every day between now and then. Some days I wake up, get ready, make the ten minute walk to work, spend the day doing things for other people and then make the ten minute walk home, by which time the day is done and the light is fading. On these days I feel cheated, a bit like when you buy something you can’t really afford only to get it home and realise you wasted your money and have no way of getting that money back. Time is more precious than money and I’m really getting to hate it when I reach the end of the day and feel as if the day is wasted. One more day of my life has passed, a day I will never get back, and if I can’t remember any thing special about that day, I feel cheated. Which is why, even if I only walk from my house to my work and back again, and even if I’m only out of my house for less than half an hour, I’m going to look for something that I can think of at the end of the day that will make me think the day wasn’t wasted. Maybe I will even take my camera with me and make sure I take at least one picture a day. One picture of something good every day could be a balance to the inevitability of life being one day shorter. Because my life is shorter at the end of every day it must also be richer in some way. Otherwise what’s the point??