The chair of happiness

I’m waiting for my butter to come to room temperature.  I’m having people over for brunch tomorrow and I need to get out of my pajamas and start cooking. I guess I don’t really need to get out of my pajamas to cook, but I feel like it might help me feel more like a participant of the day.  But before I get to that point, I have this practice, this daily practice of doing some exercise, a very short meditation, then some writing.  I write to try and inspire myself into writing more, it doesn’t always work. But I enjoy it nonetheless.  Anyway, anyway, I sit here in my chair every day while I do these writing, meditation type things. All of this background means absolutely nothing.  What I wanted to share is while I am waiting for my butter to come to room temperature, I was looking around the room, as I often do while sitting here, and then I twist my neck to look out of my big picture windows and there were big snowflakes coming down. And I thought to myself “I love my life” – I mean I just LOVE my life.  I love my apartment.  I love sitting in this chair and looking across the room at whatever is over there.  I love looking out the window at the view or the weather.  I love this chair. I love my life.  I cannot stress this enough. There is something about the feeling like I deserve this rest, this retirement.  I remember one time being out of work, this was even before Jimmy was born (so over 30 years ago) where I was on vacation but it didn’t feel right.  It didn’t feel right because I wasn’t working and I didn’t feel like I really deserved a vacation.  Like the normal way of feeling when you can’t wait to get away from work for a week.  It was not the same.  I’ve gotten over this in subsequent years, but for this particular purpose I am thinking that these feelings of loving my life so much, post-retirement, is because I feel like I deserve it.  I worked so freaking hard just to maintain life, just to pay the bills, just to get to the weekend, just to have a vacation just to be a member of society, and to what end?  I mean what end? The answer, to retirement.  The best thing about my work experience was the friends I made to which I am forever thankful, or this retirement would REALLY be lonely. I would even go so far to say that about 90% of my friends I have, have been made through some type of work connection. Even Diane.  We met at Secretary school where we were learning about working! Yes, I have highschool and college friends (and church friend) but 90% are work related.  So to say that my working years were a waste would be a lie. But the point of this waiting for butter blog is just to share, once again, how much I love my life.  I think the last 657 posts have mostly been about struggling to find my way so I thought I’d mix it up and keep sharing my good fortune, and I don’t mean fortune in monetary terms, but I feel so fortunate to sit in this chair, look across the room, look out the window and say to myself “I love my life.” Every day I say this.  Every day.

Alright, that’s enough of that.  Now onto dressing in real clothes, creaming butter and sugar together and seeing if my pie crusts work or if I have to go quickly to the store and buy store bought crusts. Whatever happens it will be wonderful.

xoxoxoxo

PS – this blog was written at a previous time. I’m experimenting with delayed posting. Although I am guaranteed to still love my life when this posts, the brunch and pie crust dilemma will be over and it may or may not be snowing.