The Primetime of Life

Technically speaking, I have now reached the traditional retirement age. It happened earlier this month, when I celebrated yet another in a rising stack of birthdays. It was a fun time, my birthday. The family took me out for Mexican food. We ate a delicious chocolate cake. My daughters made me some cool handmade gifts (pictured below).

Realistically speaking, I feel no closer to retirement than I did a couple decades ago. I am fairly drowning in work — more work than I can ever remember having. I currently have 20 writing assignments in my queue from various websites. That list doesn’t even include the two or three daily assignments I get. I feel like a mechanical arm on the assembly line, cranking out one article and then moving on to the next one, over and over, without letup, no end in sight.

I’m not complaining. When you’re a free-lance writer/journalist, it’s a good problem to have.

Mentally and emotionally, I feel about 20 years younger than I actually am, with 20 years of work still ahead of me. We have two young daughters, one 14, the other nearly 12. We have to save up for their college, pay for a family-sized home, raise them to be good citizens and successful people, healthy and wise, ready to face the world. These things take money, energy — and time.

Every day I have to fit in house chores around work assignments – cooking, grocery shopping, laundry, the dishes.

Every day I have to fit in exercise – usually a bike ride and some tennis. I bought a sports net I can hit tennis balls against in our half-paved backyard. I can hit screaming forehands and backhands against the net that don’t scream back at me, because the net allows for soft and forgiving returns. It’s a beautiful thing. I try to hit 300 balls a day. A photo of the net accompanies this blog.

I have never been busier in my life.

I feel like I am aging backwards, reaching my prime earning/responsibility years just when I might normally spend my days watching a bobber bounce up and down on the water, telling me if there’s a fish on the line. This is not a commentary on my magnificent health and vitality. It’s simply a reflection of where life and work have delivered me at this age.

Lots of people work long hours. Many hate it. I’m lucky in that I’m my own boss, so it’s cool, it’s cool.

But damn, it does fill every inch of every day. I like to watch sports on TV, and now I’m lucky to carve out an hour a day for it. I probably have a couple hundred hours of pro tennis matches and college football games recorded.

But who has the time????!!!!

I love to read, but now I’m lucky to squeeze in an hour a day of reading.

Who has the time???!!!

A couple years ago I took up drawing and stuck with it for a pretty long time, consistently, every week. But I haven’t drawn anything since we left England for America 3.5 months ago or so.

Seriously, who the f**k has the time???!!!!

If I’m being honest, I don’t really have time for this blog. The work deadlines keep rattling around in my head, making me feel guilty for even spending a few minutes on this blog. I’m trying to squeeze it in over lunch, 20 minutes tops. I’ll polish it later.

My blogs are becoming less and less frequent. I used to commit to one a week. That ain’t happening lately. Since the last time I blogged, a couple of weeks ago, WordPress (my blogging web content system) has changed up the process of editing copy, even though there was nothing wrong with the old one, and the new one kind of sucks, but anyway…

I’m not even sure I should continue the blog. The blog feels like the old me, my former self, the self that was an expat, and was trying to promote a couple of books I wrote (buy them here and here!). It was a part of my London life, a fairly big part of that life.

But now? I’m no longer in the London life. I’m in the Here Life. The Here Life represents another period of transition, another phase of moving on and starting from scratch. I’ve done that plenty over the years. Left lives and selves behind (and people, and places, and things).

I’m not sure which phase I am in now. Biology tells me I’m fast approaching the final phase. But my head tells me I’m far, far away from that. Life is busy, so busy, very busy, too busy to think about what lies further down the road.

And thank God for that….

 Note: The jazz painting was done by Older Daughter as one of my birthday gifts. The tennis ball/D for Daddy wall hanging was done by Younger Daughter as another gift. I could not have asked for better gifts.