Contemplative Tuesday

This little crazy heart is about four inches wide. I made a few of these to sell one year with pin backs. People wanted them, but didn't want to pay the $25. This is the last one. I have no idea where the others went. Probably hiding out with the sewing caddies that are also missing.

I started the morning with an email from my dear friend K. She is turning 60 this year and feeling like she has wasted her life or some such nonsense. K has always worked and now finds herself unemployed. Work defined who K was. My art has always defined who I was (am) and the work I did to earn money, never has. I never had a career job. Perhaps if I had had one,

"work" would have meant more to me, also. This is a hard place to find yourself. And this recession has forced more and more career workers to contemplate just who they are and what they want to be in the future. Hard decisions. Made more difficult by the economy.

When my grandfather got to be the age I am now, he had been retired for 8 years and spent his days playing cards with some neighbors and going fishing. He took a lot of naps. I don't think he had much to worry about with a pension and social security. My grandmother had never worked (and my mother didn't work after marriage, either) but she still had laundry (with a wringer washer and no dryer), daily meals, and her huge vegetable garden and the canning and pickling that she did with her produce. My grandmother didn't nap.

My father retired on disability at 50. He did whatever he wanted everyday until he died at 86. He had a full pension, social security and health insurance plus Medicare. He owned his home and had a dog and no longer lived with my mother. And he complained that he had never had a vacation. I would always say "bullshit" to that. Some people are never happy. He was on vacation for 36 years.

G and I are still working (in order to have low cost health insurance), rarely go on vacation, are usually tired by the end of each day, own our home and have a dog. We have time to read books and "relax" as G puts it, each evening. We are both in excellent health and could live into our 90's. We have no pension to look forward to. Will we ever retire? I don't think so. We will each, eventually, work less, but we will always go to work. And we will, eventually, take time to go on vacations. To visit friends. We both traveled a great deal in the 80's. Saw lots of lovely countries and sights. So "travel" to foreign places, isn't a destination for us. But visiting old friends, who do live in foreign places, is.

Staying busy and having fun with people is what I enjoy. I also enjoy being alone. Too much of one and not enough of the other makes me crabby. And I enjoy blogging. Perhaps, too much. And cooking. And reading. I have so many projects that I may never be finished by the time I reach my 90's. By then, I will be wanting 100 candles on my birthday cake and a card from the President.

Today my goals are simple. Walking the dog and making a boiled dinner. And I have some wrinkled tissue paper from work and was thinking of painting and gessoing it to make paper for my art journal or a paper collage. I could also add the painted paper to fabric and make something new. Right now it's time for breakfast. A bit later than usual. The Fig is outside in the SUNSHINE. No rain today.