Nancy Pelosi – after an almost 40-year run in the United States Congress – has retired. Pelosi, 86 years old, often talks about “time running short”.
My sentiments exactly and I’m eight years younger than Nancy.
My own mother was always in a hurry – and I never understood her sense of cosmic rushing until I got older and the clock started ticking way too fast for me too.
Here’s the situation: There are still so many, many things I want to do:
- Learn how to master the camera in my iPhone – snapping and cropping photos is the extent of my expertise
- Plant an herb garden and rig up a daily sprinkler system
- Knit more blankets and shawls to give to my friends and family when bad times befall them and they can use a perpetual hug
- Read a million more books. Here’s just a smattering piled up on my nightstand waiting for me to crack open:
Theo on Golden
Atmosphere
Kin
(Just finished Buckeye)
I want to master more than just making perfectly hard-boiled eggs in my Instapot and sweet potato fries in my air fryer.
Each week I want to leisurely bake from scratch zucchini and banana bread – rather than rushing to the market to buy the finished products knowing darn well they are laced with additives.
I want to develop an ability to cope with half-done projects and enhance my follow-through skills so the half-done projects get done. A good example is organizing my overabundance of paper trails belonging to all my various “projects”.
I want to invite people over on a Saturday afternoon, serve a simple but delicious meal and leisurely chat with them all without feeling pressured for time.
I want to re-unite with all the intriguing people my husband and I met on our Uniworld river cruise last fall.
And when the time comes for my final departure from this world, I want to have made it as easy as possible for my adult children to deal with what I have left behind. This entails having:
- Clean closets
- Organized lists of passwords, bank account numbers and bills I normally pay
- End-of-life preferences and burial wishes in writing
- Collection of columns written over the last 38 years.
None of these tasks have I completed, of course, much less started.
And wait! I just realized that I forgot about other things I still want to do while I am upright and functioning – such as take my granddaughters on an all-girls trip and take all my grandsons – at the same time – to a baseball game.
And I need more one-on-one time with my adult sons.
And I haven’t hiked the Appalachian Trail.
I haven’t walked the Camino de Santiago.
I haven’t explored the glories of The Grand Canyon.
The list is endless. And I’m becoming more miserable by the minute. What is THAT all about?
A sense of urgency and a heightened sense of anxiety envelops me like a misty cloud laden with humidity. And what I have NOT done overshadows all that I have experienced and have been blessed with.
So how to move forward?
What is the secret to happiness taking into consideration that I wish I had more time?
I go back to the basic principle of prioritization – identifying what truly matters and focusing first and foremost on those key activities.
AND enjoying the process of accomplishment, not just the completed project.
As they say, “It’s the journey. Not the destination.” Duh.
Keep Preserving Your Bloom,