Construction nearing completion...

I think I might have figured something out. It’s important, at least to me :-)

I have been obsessing over getting some things done in and around our house. I’ve ridden the pendulum as it swung from one extreme to the other regarding doing major renovations, moving, minor renovations, etc.  I’ve made myself crazy, and I’m pretty sure anyone within hearing range of me has also been driven crazy with my incessant blithering on about the whole thing. I’m sorry people, I really am. Thanks for sticking it out with me ❤️

Now that things are settling down a bit in the old homestead, I was thinking that I’d be able to jump right in there and get some stuff done. Some cleaning, rearranging that needed to be done, little more de-cluttering, getting our garage cleaned out enough that it’s reasonable and at least one of us could park our car in there... is this really too much to ask?  As I rolled out of bed much later than I like, which seems to be the new norm these days much to my chagrin, I forecasted a day of possibility for some of that work. Then I started down the stairs... and the realization hit me like a bucket of cold water to the face. It’s not that I’m obsessing because I want these things to be done, I’m obsessing because they need to be done. I’ll turn 54 at the end of October, and I’m really starting to feel that fact in my body. There are things that I no longer want to do, and things I no longer am able to do. Rearranging entire rooms constantly is certainly one of them. I’m not as strong as I once was, I don’t have the endurance I once enjoyed. It used to be I could hit the floor running first thing in the morning and I was still getting things accomplished well into the evening, before falling flat on my face in bed. As hard as I try to re-discover that girl, I think she might not be making a comeback.

I watched my neighbor a couple of years ago as she completely simplified her backyard. She tore out her garden, flowers, fruit bushes, the fence, anything that would require regular maintenance beyond mowing. She had enjoyed her backyard garden as passionately as I had. When I asked her why she had decided to take it all out, she explained that she had recently been diagnosed with an illness that would eventually prevent her from doing the amount of work that the garden required. She was preparing ahead of time to take care of herself. At that point, she was still able to do the work, but she knew that she would not be able to at some point in the future and wanted to simplify while she could. It finally occurred to me this morning, this is what I’ve been feeling - an urgency to set myself and our home up for the next season while I’m still able to do so.

I used to enjoy the actual process of rearranging and organizing as much as the results; it was somewhat cathartic. Now just the idea of the amount of work to achieve the results I’m striving for overwhelms me a bit. In this next season, there are people I want to spend much more “care-free timelessness” with.  I no longer want to spend my time and effort in the process of “making a home”, I want to enjoy the home that we have made with the people we love. I still enjoy most of the work to maintain our home, but my hope is that the construction of the home be complete.

Does that make sense to anyone else?