The poet Mary Oliver asks:
(In case this is hard for you to read: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Image from Google search.)
This is a question worth asking no matter how old one is, but now that I am 64, I am pondering this in earnest. One of my life goals is to live without regrets, and I can’t help but think I need to get BUSY so that I do not wish for this time back. I do not want to regret that I squandered any part of my own ‘wild and precious life’, and up until now, if I’m not busy ‘doing’, I need to get off my lazy (Southern) fanny and PRODUCE something. Two friends, who have been married for over 3 decades and are now retired, assured me lately that the way I am currently living is exactly what being retired is all about–enjoying lots of uninterrupted reading, lots of walking, sleeping later if I feel the urge, seeing and talking with friends, spending time with family. My cousin and her husband who have been retired for a number of years (and married for almost 50 years!!) champion all of this, plus regular traveling, as satisfying life style choices.
I am newly retired (June 2013), and I’m in that stage of figuring out what retirement can feel like and what I want to do with so much freedom. For several months, I was so euphoric because I no longer had a daily work obligation, that I loved every minute of my days. Euphoria is finished, and probably rightly: it’s hard to sustain that level of giddiness, but what is next? I named my blog Circles of Happiness because I want to write about the ‘circles’ that make me happy and that I believe I can sustain. I want to discover the answers to the questions I have about this chapter of life.
I invite you to accompany me on this journey and to share your experiences with creating and building the circles of happiness in your own life.
Feb8
