Not writing much, but thinking of you

I’ve been in a very introverted mode recently. Surprisingly, that does affect this blog, even though I’m sitting here alone in my living room as I write. What could be more introverted than that?

But in reality this is a reach-out, initiating contact. I’m thinking about you. This is for you. This is social. This is me wondering what you might want to hear about. This is me talking to you and imagining what you’re thinking and saying back. This is me thinking about your life, and wondering how you’re doing. I don’t blog to a nameless, faceless public. I know who you are, I know who reads this blog – you are my friends and family.

It’s not just this blog that has suffered during this time of introversion of mine. I’ve not been reaching out to all of you individually very much recently either. I hope I don’t lose any friends because of this. I’ve just been feeling a need to step back and focus on getting my own ducks in a row, as they say. Don’t worry, I’m not depressed. I’m just regrouping.

Not only was it a hard three years of pandemic (and for me, cancer) that we are now emerging from, but in a way I’m emerging from three decades of hard work, mid-life career, and entering a newer, slower phase. I’m pretty much retired now. Not quite fully – I still put my life coaching hat on occasionally. But I’m mostly done earning money.

We are also (we hope) done moving. We moved so many times, it’s incredible to think back on it. We did so much buying and selling and renovating of property. We never thought of ourselves as house flippers (buying, renovating and selling), but we almost were – with the added twist of holding some as rentals for awhile, and doing all our own rental management. Everything took so much time. It was an enormous amount of work.

And all through that time John worked overtime at his job and I worked as an environmental scientist plus life coaching on the side. And all those years I had near-continual migraines. I look back on it and wonder how it was all possible.

As I’m getting older, I’m not as good at tracking things, keeping up with things, finding things, remembering things. To compensate, I want more organization in my life than I used to need. I want to own fewer things, and I want my possessions to have a place where they belong and I want them in that place. I want my financial books in order, with a budget that I can easily track and understand. I want simple, easy, clothes that fit me right. I want routines and structures to help me remember what I’m doing throughout the day and to help me stay on track.

Thus, I have been culling and organizing. I gave away 18 boxes of things to charity earlier this week. 18 boxes! It took me days and weeks of time to go through enough stuff to come up with 18 boxes of give-away items. And we still have an entire storage unit full of who knows what. I’m embarrassed that we have so much stuff, but we just bought what we felt like we needed or wanted at the time. Plus, for a surprisingly large amount of time John and I have occupied two residences. It wasn’t just this recent split between Tucson and Albuquerque. There were also a few years when I was up in Santa Fe during the work week to avoid having to make that commute on a daily basis. And even longer ago we had a little condo outside of Las Vegas for awhile. So we have duplicates of a lot of common household items.

I’ve also been trying to catch up on old projects. For example, mending that’s been sitting in bins for years. Art projects I’ve started and not finished. Some of it I’ll never do, and that stuff is getting thrown out or given away.

I’m also doing digital organization; financial and budgeting kinds of things that have been neglected for too many years. And our office is still a disaster zone. So is the storage unit. And the garage isn’t much better. I need things to be easier; life had gotten far too complicated.

Adding to my inclination to hunker down is the weather recently! After a lovely warm fall, it has suddenly gotten cold. I have throw blankets tossed everywhere, because every time I sit down I get cold. LOL. I even Tucson is not warm enough for me. Not in the winter it isn’t!

I hope you’re all well. I will probably get back to regularly posting soon. I guess we’ll have to see what happens!

Oh, and Biska says hi. She says she’s bored and she wants a puppy for Christmas, but John says no! He’s a one-dog sort of guy, and we’ve got a good one already.

To send me a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Life Coaching for Neurodiverse Professionals