Procrastination?

It’s been a while since I’ve sat down to write a blog, but honestly, I have not been procrastinating. More of my time is tied up now visiting my husband in the nursing home, tackling the learning curve of becoming financially creative as meeting life expenses is now solely up to me, and giving a

Changing Thoughts

I visited my husband yesterday at the nursing facility. It is too easy to get caught up in the flow of negative imagination: “Oh, what if he had stopped smoking years earlier?”; “What if I had been more attentive to him before this happened?”; “What if? What if? What if?” I have to stop myself. These trains of thought do no one any good, and I know Alan would never have stopped smoking if the doctors had said he shouldn’t smoke at least until he healed up from his pneumonia, and if I had decided to stop enabling him by bringing him cigarettes. He’s clean two months now, and maybe his dementia helps the situation, because he does not always remember to ask me for them, but he also forgets that I have told him I am not enabling that old habit any more.

Challenges

It’s not to say there won’t be hard times. But to everything there is a season, as that old song from Ecclesiastes goes. The wheel of the seasons goes around, time turns, and things are different again. Hopefully better than before.

Marrying Self Aspects

One of the ways toward wholeness within my psyche, I have learned for me, my self, and I, is to try to bring together contradictory feelings within me. Sometimes these emotions are quite polarized along with their accompanying thoughts, but when I can hold awareness of my own inner contradictions at the same time I am experiencing meeting a trigger in life, I create the necessary inner friction for a point of change.

Techology

Have you ever dealt with the frustrations of technology? I have a learning curve these days with anything new. The simple fact of aging brings with it a slowing down of short term memory. Where my mind used to be like lightning, now I need to slow down to the pace of the day. Yet when my friend Cathy showed me her Apple iPad with the neatest feature – you can draw right on the screen with Apple’s own special pencil – I knew I had to have one. Cathy uses a program called Procreate especially designed for this platform.

Self Care

I got up early today on my day off to work out before the home fills up with the smell of cigarettes and the noise of smoker’s cough that wake up with my husband. It feels good to lift weights in the cool of the morning, when I can hear the calling of birds starting their day and going about feeding their families. This is my quiet time. This is what I can control in my life: the self care that helps me against aging, diabetes, high blood pressure, and stiffening joints. This is my “feel good” practice – finding simplicity in the moments I am with myself, feeling good being simple, feeling good being me.

Is It “Less is More” or “More is Less”?

Life has brought some interesting turns that make for creative innovations and new ways of doing things. I have to admit that part of these innovations are simplifying methods of doing things due to the aging process.

Wherever We Are

I like it when my thoughts are uncluttered by my emotions enough to blog or follow a new train of thought in writing I am doing, but I had to admit a few years ago: Without stimulation in my life from the imperative to work for a living, my thoughts would be likewise unstimulated and rather boring.

Dog and Old Lady

One recent summer evening I set out for a walk with our dog Dolly. My neighbor, kitty corner across the street, has two energetic little boys, and the family goes out after dinner, the parents walking, and the little boys riding their bicycles. The boys ride far ahead of their parents most days, and coming upon them, I felt shocked to hear the boys chanting, “Oh, no! It’s Dog and Old Lady!” I looked around, and realized it was ME they were chanting about!

Always New

Here’s an upbeat idea: Every day, I am new. Sit with that a moment. Savor it. Say it slowly to yourself. “Every day, I am new.” Savor it some more. How does it make you feel? Does it make you feel good? “Every day, I am new.” As I age, I have learned to live with the gray hair –