Anyone Can Do It

I was inundated with ideas for my thots today. It seemed everywhere I went new things cropped up and I actually started jotting down a small list of ideas, but then the most fundamental truth finally came to me.

I have all these ideas because I am so happy. In fact, I am happier right now than I have been in years, perhaps even ever and that is almost incomprehensible.

Here I am, sixty years old and at an age where people often start to worry if they have what they need to live out their lives. Is their retirement large enough? Is this the house they have always dreamed of? Can they adjust to the changes that are appearing almost daily? And the answer is yes!

I left almost everything I knew and showed up on my daughter's doorstep in the middle of the night not knowing where I would be living, what I would be doing, how I would be doing it, what the rest of my life would be like. Then, one step at a time, I began to build a new life from scratch. I had a handful of clothing, my computer, my car, some personal items and my dog and from these things came all of this that I have now! If I can do this, you can do this.

First I had to find a place I could afford to live that would accept my dog and that, hopefully, would be not fancy, but decent. While I went from one place to another, I filled in the extra hours reacquainting myself with the city I was in, going to parks, driving around, looking at the internet. It was on the internet that I discovered an organization seeking volunteers and I contacted them. They helped me find places where my skills might be useful about the same time I found this apartment.

Slowly but surely I furnished my two rooms here and began to furnish the hours of my day with places I could go to be useful. Part of them were walking my dog who truly appreciates the chance to get out and around our new neighborhood. He is the perfect companion. Part of them were helping with a reading program for small children and some were working at the museum. Now I have shaped the hours of my days into useful units where I not only help other people, but have built friendships and social systems that are so fulfilling, slowly discarding some jobs and expanding others. I also began to expand my creative abilities and have found one of the most fulfilling outlets for my writing that also has brought new friends into my life.

I find myself busier than I have been in years and feeling richer and more content than I think I knew it was possible to be just taking one tiny step after another. So it is important never to give up hope and think you are too old, or too tired, or too useless, or too dumb, or even too poor, because you are not.