Transitioning from making a living to making a life...without stripping your gears?

Maybe the lines were more clearly drawn when our grandparents were living their timeline. They went to school. Then they went to work.  Maybe they changed jobs once. Then they gave their all to their chosen profession for a certain number of years, after which someone made a nice speech, cut some cake, gave them a watch, smacked them on the butt & declared them 'retirees.'  At which point they had paid off their mortgages & launched into their 'golden years' with enough saved to travel a bit, fill a couple of albums with pics of those trips & their grand kids.  Then they died, & had also saved enough to pay for their final funereal wishes, & leave a little or a lot to their progeny. The end. 

Our story arcs are no longer that clear cut or linear (if an arc can be linear?).  School can overlap work. Some of us will die never having chosen a major. We careen through careers, changing direction like socks, location like nomads, & focus like a room full of caffeinated preschoolers. Some of us choose to forego having kids. Some of us simply run out of biological time. We upsize, downsize, live in McMansions or tiny houses no bigger than an Airstream. We travel for work, telecommute, staycation, turn our hobbies into careers & our careers into contract work, then we blog about all that. 

(My workspace--representing working from home & completion of a hairbrained, put off project that finally came to fruition & worked better than anticipated--the big blue porch table)

The lines between work & leisure are so blurred they are virtually nonexistent, & we live so long & mistrust Social Security & our investments so much that a lot of us jam our fingers in our ears & babble 'LALALALALALALALALALALALA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU LALALALALA' when anyone dares utter 'retirement' in our presence. 

At this point, I think the most any of us dare hope is for a shifting (at some point, or gradually) of the emphasis from making a living to making a life. To that end, & despite appearances of seemingly random scrambling, I think I must have always had an 'unplan' churning away in the back of my head, kind of like an unsung background program while I focused on a more pressing foreground ap. 

I have a lot in common with Henny Penny, chiefly that my friends poked fun at my over-the-top emphasis on toil. They would jab that I was trying to pay off my mortgage last week. Sometimes, after a few sleepless nights spent making jewelry & ornaments during high season, I questioned my sanity too.  

        (Best coworker in the world--Mu)

An aside:  a lot of their apparent jibes were just their way of trying to convince me that I am human & in fact need sleep. My friends & my Mom know I am beyond bullheaded & that humor is really the only way to change my behavior. That, or making me believe it is my idea. Also, there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY I could have worked like I did without an unseen army of support from Mom & my friends. From seemingly random drop bys just when I was setting up, lugging, or taking down, to food, beverages, laughs, supplies, opinions, ideas, & actual financial support (thanks Mom!), I get by with a lot of help from my Mom & my friends. They have been integral in any life- or financial-goals met.  

   (View of landscape change--realized by decidedly UN-glamorous labor of friends + solar)

So now what?  When you've rushed headlong at one goal for several years, once met, how do you put on the brakes instead of running off the edge into thin air, a la Wiley Coyote?  

I'm just starting to answer that for myself. Not pretending this is a good template for everybody, mine looks more like a shift from 'plan it for someday' to 'WHY NOT NOW?  It doesn't sound like a big deal & thus far I'm not talking about huge life changes, but it requires a fundamental brain retrain, even for the smaller stuff. Most of mine is about arty & construction projects. And it is about stomping down some fear. Drowning by doing that damnable voice of doubt (mine sounds like Bush saying 'wouldn't be prudent').  

Anti-Pro Day (First Annual)

This morning I officially declared today, & all Mom's Day Eves hereafter in perpetuity, 'Anti-Pro Day.'  That is to say, today is a day dedicated to the systematic eradication of things we've procrastinated about for at least two months*.'  (*Note:  the two month line of demarcation is a proviso to weed out things we have merely put off, & that we will take care of before the point at which said delay becomes an embarrassment.). 

             (Mythical studio organization system I've procrastinated about forever)

Now to the topic of embarrassment, & it is this part that caused me to attach the day to Mother's Day.  

Many or most of us are not actually going to have the luxury of spending tomorrow with our Moms, for reasons ranging from simple distance to more dire.  For those of us who are as crazy about our Mom as I am (& crazy proud, as almost anyone who has had more than a one minute conversation with me would surely attest), this is rough.  Sure, we talk/text/email daily & occasionally video chat, but that is a sad substitute for working a crossword together, or counting pineapple starts in the patch (24 this year!) or group 'conversations' with us & my dog Mu,

            (Mu, procrastinating about barking)

or just being lazy & lingering at the breakfast table chatting about nothing while putting off showering. 

And I'm back 'round to procrastination. I am 53 & since no one but Mu sees my house most days, & since organization & methodical cleaning & maintenance rarely go hand in hand with creativity, I tend to let things get away from me periodically. And we're so very 'there' now.  Just coming off high season for tourism & end of year accounting cleanup at the other job, plus adding an entirely new line to From the C (gold vs silver, handmade chain links),

                         (New gold bamboo wrap aquamarine ring)

it all conspires to mean house-, body-, & car maintenance tasks have mounted up to borderline insurmountable.  

So right now, I'd be horribly embarrassed for Mom to see the state of my 'state.'  And so I decided to act like she would be here tomorrow & set about taking care of things, tout suite.  I climbed ladders & re-hung sagging curtains. I pulled all my vending equipment out of my car, cleaned & oiled it, fixed my bent tent leg so it would retract, replaced the zillion missing bolts & handle from my folding table, cleaned out my cigar box, & re-loaded the car. Now I'm going to tie a sickly orchid in the miracle-working 'hospital tree,'  wash the windows & screens, disassemble & clean the oscillating fans, & then start loading the car with things for storage or donation. 

It is cooperating & clouding up for much-needed rain & that means I can wash all the Mu linens (towels & rugs) without compunction over drought level cisterns. And then I'll shave Mu to summer cut length, bathe her & water the plants.  Then it will be time to organize my studio, move furniture & steam floors. 

Finally I want to get to an outdoor art project.  A long cinder block wall at the back of my yard wants a fresh coat of tiffany blue, followed by adding some big, boldly graphic tropical leaf shapes in my leftover paint colors. Stay tuned for that before & after. 

Anybody who knows me realizes that by writing the litany above, I have managed to procrastinate just a little longer. 

Happy Mother's Day!

Hot au Many (as opposed to Pot au Feu)

The French have many beef stews, probably the most 'peasanty' of which is 'Pot au Feu.'  The French never had to live with our inconsistent WAPA, but they do (as most of us practice) tend to cook from whatever fresh ingredients they can source. So today's culinary Cirque du Soleil concoction combines the peasant stew concept with the whatever is fresh, available, & most importantly, whatever this weeks myriad power outages have failed to shrivel or rot. Yum, that sounds good!  ;) You'll note there is no beef in my version, but the 'Many' in the title refers to the number of veggies. The heartiest of those & the base of this satisfying, just one more spoonful dish is baby Portobello  Shrooms. The 'Hot' descriptor comes later. 

I like to cook when I get to chop a lot of stuff & don't have to measure exactly. Makes me feel all 'chefy' inside. So here goes:

Coarsely chop 2 medium  or 3 large carrots, 3 large stalks of celery, reserving the leaves, and 4-5 good sized shallots. Put them together in one bowl & put them aside. 

Scrub a mesh bagful (1 1/2-2 lbs) of cutesy little potatoes (new, Yukon gold, white cream, whatever you find) & pare out bad spots. Leave the skins on & cut them each into 2 or 3 pieces each to make them cook more uniformly. Put them in a big soup pot (there will be lots of room, but we'll take care of that later) & cover generously w/ salted water, adding a hearty shake of granulated garlic & the reserved celery leaves.  Bring to a boil & cook until just tender (don't cook to a mush because they'll be cooked a bit more when combined with the other ingredients), then drain into a colander & add 2 TBS butter & 1 TBS sesame oil (tempura version is lighter) to the empty soup pot & return to the heat. Add 1 tsp ground chipotle, 1 tsp gran garlic, 1 tsp curry powder, 1/2 tsp each, ground cumin & cumin seed & heat a bit to release the flavor of the spices.  Add the bowlful of carrot, celery, shallot dice & stir to combine with oil, butter & spices. 

Cook that mixture until celery & shallots start to become transparent.  While the celery mix is cooking, clean & roughly chop 2 8oz containers of baby portobellos & (optional) 4-5 thin slices of Deli honey ham, then cut the kernels off 3 ears of cleaned sweet corn. As soon as the celery is transparent, add the shrooms, ham, cooked potatoes & corn kernels to the pot along with a few more shakes of gran garlic & 1-2 tsp Worcestershire sauce. Stir to combine, cover with the lid & reduce to a simmer for 3 minutes. At this point I added 1/4c of shaved Parmesan but you can opt out.  Stir again & as soon as the cheese melts, remove from heat & stir in 1/4 c nonfat plain Greek yogurt. 

Serve in your fave bowl. The smokey heat of the chipotle balances well with the sweet corn & the nutty, earthy notes of portobello & sesame. The yogurt is a bit of richness to finish. 

Enjoy!

Athletic 'Feets'

D

(This sea glass jumbie did not run in today's race, much like us!)

So Triathlon has run right by us (me & Mu) again & though we might not have the enormous & deserved sense of accomplishment that accompanies that annual event, we feel pretty upbeat about what we have done instead. Mu has napped in 4 fave breezy spots, & as for me, I've been spinning gold into, well, gold. More accurately, gold filled wire into hand forged bamboo wrap links & teardrop earrings.

(Light amethyst/14kt GF/lavender sea glass necklace, in process)

So to all the amazing athletes from near & far who 'went for the gold' today, congratulations!
Oooh!  Mu has poured on the afterburner, pulled out all stops, & found a FIFTH nap spot. Now that's dedication!  She appears unbeatable in her napquest, so good luck to all challengers!