October 28, 2009

No Guilt




Southern California’s version of the Matterhorn via Disney. 2009.


Himself: Vastly better. Came to the Store with and moved all the Christmas boxes for me so I could see what had been priced or not. Labeled all boxes. Dinner, meeting, stayed up till 10:30 pm.

Herself: Talked with Bee about everything but her weight loss class. Gotta call her back. Still living “as if” except in painting class. A thank you lunch at a new restaurant. Ate soup and salad. Sorted Christmas Boxes. Worked on a piece about ship historians. Dinner entre and salad then M&M’s….ah, guilt. Only up once in night to reup on cough syrup and drops and the blue pill too.

Reading: Finished a new book about the war years in the Gurnsey’s. Touching.

Balance: Letting go of the massive sense of continuing failure.

Of course I feel guilty letting go of the painting class, but the continual and weighty sense of failure is one I’ve carried around for many years and don’t feel I have to any more.

Oh, but that’s what you are best at….the old argument. What I am best at is what I am doing now. That’s a better argument. I’m letting go of the old and moving on to the new. If I’m not working on a novel, what am I doing. I’m not going to my Wednesday writing class. That too feels freeing. I am going to my Thursday writing class. That feels right.

Life shrinks as you get older. Mine does anyway. Every day seems full, filled to the brim with worthwhile things, causes, and busyness. Never a spare moment, it appears. I, with my common cold, find time even more compressed that usual. If it takes ten minutes to blow my nose, then to take out the tissue, prepare the tissue, blow the nose, and banish the tissue seems to take an hour.

I don’t seem to have a proper perspective on things.

I seem to want to play with my cookbooks and not with my paints. I’m about to launch a barrage of negative notes to an Amazon seller who took my money but didn’t send me my new quilting book. I want to play with my fabrics. I relish this “free” day….only free because I am fading away from a commitment…..and plan on playing all day. When I’m not working on something, that is. Silly me.

3 comments:

  1. No guilt is a good thing. If you can't just do what you want to do now, when will it happen?

    If you do a review of the Amazon seller, you'll get an immediate response. They don't like negative stuff.

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  2. "Life is shrinking as you get older" I like that. It sums it up as well as anything--that sense that just one thing to do in a day may take all day. I amaze myself how much I've let go. I don't agonize over whether I'm a real writer anymore, I don't measure myself to everybody else any more. Like you say, life is shrinking but it fits better somehow. Don't sweat the small stuff (and it's all small stuff) is my new motto.

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  3. I like the idea of playing all day. Not something I do enough of. Thanks for the reminder...

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