Not Getting It All Done

 

It's still winter.  Actually winter has not yet officially begun - that's some days away yet.  But this morning I woke to more 'winter' like conditions and a light snow.  

I don't know if it is actually snowing or just the colder temps squeezing the moisture out of the air so it can drift down to the ground because the sun is up there, covered with a haze.

Whatever, I'll take it after several very overcast, dreary, dark days.

Winter is a time for slowing down.  Plants go dormant.  Some animals hibernate.  Humans seem determined to carry on in spite of layers of warmer clothing, colder temps, hands that don't want to work, bodies that seem to run out of energy with the dying of the light.  Or never seem to have any.

But this is not the 'worst' time of year for me.  That is yet to come.  February.  I've always dreaded February.  Whoever made it the shortest month knew what they were doing.  

As I get older and reflect back on my life there are so many things I wanted to do, and never will now.

Travel more, especially off the continent.  I've been around many places in the US, some in Canada, none in Mexico.  I have made it to Europe, several times, especially Sweden.  But not other continents.  And never will now.

But that doesn't mean I can't keep learning.  We watch a lot of documentaries.  We especially like ones about nature because they so frequently take us to places we will never see in person.  History.  Always new insights to be learned from what has gone before.  Usually discovering that as a species, humans haven't changed much.  At all.

I used to 'work' every minute of the day but the past few years I simply have not, can not, and so I don't get nearly as much done as I would like.

OTOH, I am supposed to be 'retired', and the onus on earning an income is much less.  However, that doesn't mean I feel entirely comfortable not doing something about my inventory of yarns - too much to give away, so I try to weave it up and sell what I can.

I had great expectations of what I could accomplish this year, which started off not with a bang but a whimper with that severe shingles outbreak.  It took weeks to recover from that, and honestly?  I don't know that I have.  Getting older is, in some cases, a slow steady downward spiral, sometimes with a quick drop in what I can do - or not.  Shingles was such a drop.  

I spend far too much time sitting in my recliner, ignoring the things I could be doing.  

OTOH, 2023 is set to begin with a 'bang' - 3 zoom lectures the first week of January, a quick trip to Vancouver the second week of January for a medical appointment, home to do a beginning weaving class.  I'm ignoring things that need to be done for all of them.  I keep saying I'll feel 'better' after the solstice and the returning of the sun.

My story, sticking to it...always have worked 'better' when the deadlines loom...