New beginnings in Daydreaming on the Porch

The days flows by in fast currents, swiftly, unstoppable, inexorable, lost to time and memory for the most part because I have not taken enough time to think deeply about where I am going and what has meaning and value to me now. I live amid piles of books and magazines and computer devices, so many distractions and possible distractions that I feel overwhelmed and will never be able to read all I want to read or listen to all the courses I have bought and downloaded, or write what is really pressing on my mind, as I am trying to do now, feebly and after much procrastination. Partly I am excusing that by not having OD anymore as my life's default writing platform and that I am only slowly getting used to Prosebox. Time will tell. And who knows how long Prosebox will be here. OD lasted 15 years. That seems phenomenal now.

But everything's a blur also because I am preoccupied with caregiving for my 90-year-old mother, hiring and paying all the outside caregivers ( who are like family now, thank goodness), keeping up with a full-time job, getting away to walk and take pictures, but all the while never really having enough time to just have the luxury of time. Time to lie in bed for hours thinking and reading and not having to always be somewhere or take care of some need.

Where does it all lead to, this ceaseless activity, physical and mental?
I am not getting any younger. I'll be 63 in a month. I find myself thinking more and more about how much or little time I have left. There's no longer an endless series of days and nights and new career possibilities or places to move to or new friends to make. I am here, now, 20 years here and I'm not going anywhere. Retirement? Perish the thought. I'm too afraid and insecure to do that. Not yet anyway. I'll know when I have to.

The baby monitor that lets me hear upstairs when my mother is calling me from downstairs, is deteriorating into static and noise and I need to get another one. I'm nervous when it's not working properly. I should have gotten another one before now. This is the kind of thing that gives me anxiety. It's not something I would have thought I'd be worrying about 20 years ago.

I was sitting in the eyeglass store this afternoon looking at myself in one of those small, round mirrors, and I looked old. I mean, no denying it, no rationalizing. Old. Sagging folds under my chin and on my neck, dark bags under my eyes. Full head of gray hair, just cut this afternoon. That didn't help much but it made me feel better. I helped someone at work the other day, nice as can be, but who was older than me for sure and then she made some reference to "our generation."

I am surrounded by college students where I live. They're going to live forever, just look at them.

We've had three days of cold, rainy weather and very overcast skies. When the sun reappears tomorrow, hopefully, it will be a new day, a new beginning.