It's almost the end of January and my Christmas tree and decorations are all still up.  Oh I know I kept it all up for almost two years during the Pandemic, but this is different.  This is me just being incapable of movement.

It's cold, and now that I'm retired I can sleep late.  The dangers of owning a smart phone are becoming clearer and clearer.  There are so many rabbit holes to fall down.  There's Penny the Talking Cat, and there's Wordle, Scrabble, and Words With Friends.  The next thing I know there are two hours of my life just missing....

If it doesn't get done by noon it's probably not going to get done.  This includes laundry, grocery shopping, piano practice, and writing this blog.  But the BIG thing I find myself avoiding is launching the website for my career as a voice over talent, something I have always wanted and which is scaring the stuffing out of me the closer I get to it.  The creativity of my excuses impresses even me.  Adjusting to life as a retired person is just plain weird.  Having to re-define oneself this late in life was not in my plans.  In case my self-confidence wasn't shaky enough, every so often I look in the bathroom mirror and wonder how my grandmother got into the house without my noticing.

Oh, I am forcing myself to make progress in small ways.  Today I made an appointment to have a "head shot" taken a week from Monday.  I'll probably pray for snow.  But if I don't use it on my website they can always use it at my wake.  I can use it for auditions, too.  Which reminds me, I went up for a part in a local production of "Peter and the Starcatcher" and got it.  I will be the Fighting Prawn (the cranky crustacean), Grempkin (the nasty director of the orphanage), and occasionally a pirate or a mermaid.  Now if that doesn't fill me with feelings of invincibility what will?

Still, changing gears at this age is difficult and frightening.  The cold weather suits my mood, because I feel frozen in place.  It's going to take a bit of bravado to start the actual "next chapter".  The most difficult part is getting out of my own way.  I am, however, blessed with amazing and supportive friends to whom I have given permission to give me a swift kick in the most efficacious spot to get me moving again.

People who were born during the Truman Administration probably shouldn't, generally speaking, wear t-shirts with snappy sayings on them, however I saw one I couldn't (and didn't) resist.  It says in bold white letters on a black background, "I can do ANYTHING.  Except reach the top shelf.  I can't do that" and you know what?  I haven't gotten it yet.  Why?  Because it's on back order.  Apparently I'm not the only one who needs to bolster her courage while acknowledging her limitations.

I don't do resolutions.  At least not on New Year's Day.  I consider myself sort of a "work in progress" throughout the year, and I try to patch and stitch as I go along.  The same things about myself which drove me crazy years ago tend to still haunt me, so it's not as though I don't know what I need to work on.  Every morning I wake up with the best of intentions and some days I manage better than others.  I want to lose weight. I want to keep in touch with all the people I love.  I want to live in a clean house (Hey.  It could happen.)  I want to exercise more and read more and write more and.....no sane human being would expect all that stuff to happen at the same time.  Getting older tends to teach people to cut themselves a little slack, or at least I think it should.

The world isn't perfect.  The weather isn't perfect.  The politicians aren't perfect.  Are we seeing a pattern here?  A standard line of mine has become "If this were perfect we wouldn't need Heaven" and that's glib, but it's true.  Don't expect perfection from the world.  If the world were perfect, if human beings were perfect, where would we get a chance to practice our compassion and love and forgiveness and patience?  The trickiest part of this line of thought is when we have to include ourselves.  It's tough to forgive ourselves for not being perfect.

I hit seventy this year and I'm still struggling to believe in myself and to stick my nose out of my comfort zone  So I'm taking piano lessons once a week.  I took them once before, but told myself I wasn't very good at it and probably never would be, so I stopped.  Big mistake.  I'm trying again, this time with the attitude that I just want to enjoy it.  If I get better (and to my amazement that seems to be happening at least a little), great.  If not, I'll just play when nobody is at home.  And I'll enjoy it.

I've been talking for over a year about launching a career as a voice over actor, and I've had a million excuses on why I haven't "launched" yet.  So today I contacted someone who designs websites for the VO crowd and I'm waiting to hear back.  I hate computers.  I'm terrified of editing out all the extraneous noises that pop up during a recording.  I'm not crazy about staying in my tiny walk-in closet, where I record, for any length of time because it's positively claustrophobic, but I'm determined to do it.

And I keep shelling out money to keep this little blog, even though I hardly ever write these days.  I'm going to try to be better about that, too, because I actually enjoy this once I sit down.  The hard part is sitting down. The things that bring us joy are the things we are good at usually.  And the things we're good at are our gifts.  They don't have to be the best gifts, or the biggest, or the shiniest, or the loudest, or the strongest, or the most famous.  We all have something that makes us smile, that brings peace to that crazy whirling gyroscope inside.  We're supposed to use those gifts.  So let's think about that for a minute.  Maybe this is the year you'll find your gift or nurture the ones you know you have, but have been neglecting.  You deserve that smile.  That quiet space inside 

I'm going to work on that.  But it's not a resolution.  It's a promise.