They say don’t sweat the small stuff. Easy for you to say, I say. There’s Derby County two minutes from relegation, hooray, but they escape, boo. There’s the result of the local elections – I despair, I really do. I read that 45,000 people have entered a lottery to kill bison in USA – am I missing something? On a brighter note the little dog lost in Temple Newsam Park missing for two nights and yet found against all the odds. Not all small but all beyond my control and hence foolish to get upset about.
Then, at a more personal level, there are all the circumstances that, when I wake up in the middle of the night, flood my brain and keep me awake for the next couple of hours worrying. There’s the financial side of life which has suddenly become important because of our investing in the Colorado cabin. In the previous seven years of retirement we haven’t had much to spend our pensions on, just ticking over you might say. Now we have the cabin.
How do I make sure I get the best deal equity release-wise and should I find another form of borrowing entirely? And are all these financial experts I’ve been talking to on the phone (hard to judge their honesty when you can’t look them straight in the eye), really giving me unbiased advice? Can you really get a mortgage aged 72, and if we do, can we afford to pay it off on a monthly basis for the next 10, or however, many, years? Are we saddling ourselves with unnecessary debt?
At a more mundane financial level. Is £500 too much for a new shower unit, have I been duped? Is it really, as the call-out plumber pronounced, unfixable? Do we really need two showers? Small stuff or what? Is the £900 I’ve just paid the planning consultant money well-spent? Does he really believe we’ll be successful in our application for change of use on the barn or is he putting in his bill now before the council say no and I start complaining about the cost of failure?
Should I really have bought another laptop for £500 just so I could do the podcasts? I haven’t worried about our retirement finances for a long time. Hence very few retirement blogs focusing on the financial side of things. Yes, I know well lucky you then. Ok I do need a new pair of boots, but are these really water-proof for £160?
Oh and those podcasts, why am I worrying about this self-inflicted form of social media. I mean, who cares if I do it or not? Oh and why is my blog – having been number one on Google (and that’s the hard part) – now consistently appearing around number 7 to 9. What am I doing wrong or, probably more to the point, what is everybody else doing better? And, oh again, have I bought the right vines (see next vineyard blog for more information).
And on and on. You see I’ve worked out that the trick with the small stuff is to remove from underneath it the big stuff. If all your small stuff is plonked on top of bigger worries you’ve no effing chance. Pardon my French.
In our case the big stuff is our health. Now it’s true that it can be hard with one’s health to decide where the small stuff stops and the big stuff begins. True, we’ve not had Covid to contend with although in the middle of the night with both of us coughing away, the mind does run on, does it not? Well not to contend with first hand anyway, but we have had all the restrictions that go with it to deal with and they have been a bit undermining of one’s confidence.
But the real problem has come with the jointness of our ailments, Mrs Summerhouse and I. I have always expected my health to be a bit wonky with the diabetes and all my shakes and wobbles, but not Mrs SH’s. But just lately she worries me a bit. The state of both our healths will no doubt be a topic for a future retirement blog. Just let me say, for now, it is the foundation on which the small stuff is layered. With this foundation this small stuff becomes just that bit bigger.
Throw into this murky melting pot that old classic trouble-maker / mental mistake of rolling the little things together about which I have written before and which is exactly what happens in the middle of the night. At this time the little blighters chase each other round my brain in an unending and so over-powering loop
And if by now you’re wondering why is he telling us / sharing with us all this misery? Well, two reasons. One, as you know, I write things for my own comfort, writing as therapy. I think that might have worked. But, in addition, I write for any of you out there that might be similarly worrying about either the small stuff, the big stuff or most likely a combination of both. I just wanted you to know, in case you didn’t, that you are not alone and, dare I say, that maintaining your sense of humour (as I have tried to do in this retirement blog) and a sense of balance, definitely helps. Just threw that last bit in free of charge.
So good luck with your efforts not to sweat the small stuff, as the man said.