Next Steps

Since I last wrote, I have retired!  I couldn’t be happier.  I can’t count the times I smile or laugh out loud and say “Oh, how wonderful!” to myself.  I say this when I think I don’t have to go to bed at a specific time, or wake up in time to go to work or when its snowing hard and I know I don’t have to face a morning of hazardous driving, but instead can look out my window and just appreciate the beauty of the landscape with a cup of hot cocoa and a fire roaring in the fireplace. 

My time, at last, is my own.  All those “to dos” I’ve been thinking about can now become a reality.   In my last article, I wrote about cleaning out “things.”  I’ve not only been doing that but cleaned my house thoroughly, including my rec room downstairs that was being used as a catchall.  Actually, I’ve been driving myself crazy.  I am a woman with a mission.  I want that minimalist look I spoke about with everything in order and all my projects done.  And if you remember the scope of those projects, even if I worked 24/7, it would still take me months, possibly years to achieve.  I am chipping away.

Now don’t misunderstand, I’m not cloistered in my house.  My friends and family are too important to me and so I have also been visiting and partying.  I’ve been reading and catching up on films.  I joined a gym and enrolled in Tai Chi and Yoga classes.  It’s just that the minute I’m home, I’m attacking a drawer or a box of old letters and memorabilia.  I found years of Christmas cards and appointment books from high school.  I’ve shredded a file cabinet drawer of work related stuff and my income tax returns from 1983.  It’s never-ending. 

My friends say why do you have this obsession to clean out your house?  Are you moving?  I say, I don’t know.  I just feel that I am headed for a change.  I don’t know what it will be but I want to be ready.

In the meantime, I decided I had to physically remove myself from my house for a while.  I have to get away from my compulsion.  So I have planned a trip South.  I will start in New Haven, visiting Cathy, a college friend, then to West Nyack, NY to visit June who I met when I was in Morocco; on to my nephew in PA, to my son,  and an old friend, both of whom live in Charlotte and so on down the gulf side coast of Florida, and back up the Atlantic side.  I will sit on the beach and walk and talk with my friends and thoroughly relax for 6 weeks.   And I will think.  About what comes next.

Travel is always a necessity.  And I’m considering taking up Spanish and French again.  At other times in my life, I came close to being passable in both languages.  There are really cheap language schools in France and Mexico and Guatemala.  I have to decide if I’m really going to try to write seriously or if I’ve just been talking about it for years.  And I’ve been thinking about what I could do for others.  Especially women. 

When I was a stay at home mom, I always did volunteer work; at the schools or with Literacy Volunteers.  Now I have the time again and I feel I need to be involved again.  My gut always comes back to women.  Teenaged girls, battered women.  Tonight, I watched a “60 Minutes” segment about 80% of the women in the Congo being raped as a weapon of war and I wanted to help them somehow. 

I don’t know what the next steps in my life are going to be.  I have a feeling that for a while I will concentrate on myself.  Becoming healthier, weeding out dreams from reality, doing some things for myself that I couldn’t do before because of time constraints, and then after I’ve indulged myself for a while, we’ll see.

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