I’m pretty sure I’ve written about the need for resilience in retirement before. I will check but if I ever doubted it then yesterday reminded me and then some. Yesterday was my birthday, my 76th birthday as you ask and about 1.30 in the morning of this birthday I lay awake (not an uncommon event) and mulled over (that sounds better than worried about), all the stuff that was going off in my life. And I’m not even going to mention leaking roofs, I’ll save that topic for another blog. Anyway back to my birthday.
First, I didn’t feel great about being 76. When I was 50 a friend and I chatted about settling for living until we were 80. Ha, it seemed such a long way away – then. Now it seems to be a mere 4 years away. 4 more springs, summers and so on And that’s if I am lucky. A year or so ago in the depths of my health crises, that didn’t seem entirely likely. Anyway here I was at 1.30 in the morning of my 76th birthday, thinking about stuff, like you do.
Second, one of our dogs had been sick and had diarrhea. Is that how you spell it? In their cage and it needed cleaning and disinfecting all that good stuff. True, I wasn’t actually doing any of this but it kept me awake and I was worried about him. Next in line, worry number three, we had just lost the Euro final to Spain and there wasn’t much sympathy from around the world as far as I could make out. That’s football (soccer); cricket, rugby, tennis. You name it, all bad.
And then there was the website London Legend which had taken my money but not provided the item of clothing I ordered. I don’t usually buy clothes on line but I was trying to be helpful to Mrs Summerhouse in buying a birthday present when she was stuck for an idea. Had I been scammed? I am still waiting to find out.
And finally just enough room in my battered brain for further anxiety, this time about this very blog. It was not available on line for some reason beyond my limited understanding of the internet. I contacted my IT guy and perhaps coincidentally it appeared again but he didn’t say he’d fixed it so who knows may just have been a coincidence? But just when I thought it was safe to go back in the water I noticed that I no longer occupied number one position on Google where I have been for quite a while. In fact my blog, The Summerhouse Years had completely vanished into the internet ether. And as far as I can tell it is still vanished.
Funny really the last blog I wrote was about giving it up and now it seemed it had given up with no help from me. Nothing like not being allowed something to make you want it even though before not being allowed it you thought you didn’t want it. If you see what I mean.
So all this (and more) going through my brain in the middle of the night and I’m telling myself I need to be resilient. Avoid rolling all of the above together and making the problems insoluble. Tease them apart and try and take some action on each one or accept them as stuff you have to live with. That was the kind of advice that I used to give out in my psychologist days. Well now, in the middle of the night on my 76th birthday, it seems to be a case of psychologist heal thyself. I’ll let you know how I get on providing this blog doesn’t completely disappear of course.