Contemplation

I’ve been in a contemplative mood of late. Not that I ever stop thinking about what might be, what might have been, what should or shouldn’t be. But for the most part, my ruminations along these lines would fit easily into a category that one might consider wool gathering. Not so, my flights of late.

 There have been a lot of changes in my life and our family’s lives of late. Nothing earth shaking but nevertheless the sorts of things that cause you to reconsider your position in various areas of your life – a serious accident, a new job, impending graduation, reconsideration of career choice, planning for retirement. I won’t get into the specifics of who and how and when and why. If you don’t know, you don’t need to know. And anyway, it’s not my central point here.

 Part of the plan or not, when these and other personal events that I won’t mention converge at a single point in time, wool gathering quickly gives way to deeper reflection.

Mary and I have been getting ever more focused in our plans for the future; that is, our future as empty nesters and eventually, as retirees. We know we won’t spend our sunset years in our present house. Microsoft and Genentech have trailed  their comet tails of young, wealthy retirees whose primary contribution to our hometown has been to make it a bourgeois enclave in which our lifestyle has no place. (No bitterness, I promise – the Bellevue version of gentrification is simply what’s happened in hundreds of communities around this country, only with a somewhat younger, more tech-savvy and more sociologically clueless face.)

To be fair, the demographic shift hereabouts is not the sole reason for our decision to relocate. We want to be close to Daughters One and also Two but of course, who knows where they will end up. Prevailing weather patterns affect our creaky bones.   I’d like to be less suburban. We’d like a more open plan house and probably smaller.

As I said, lots of reasons and the bottom line is a move, probably in three to five years. But our eventual relocation is not the sole or even primary reason for my shift in thoughts. 

I’m in (The Force willing) my terminal job before retirement and loving what I do, I’m freed from the need to think about career moves. I’ve zero interest in ever again having direct reports so as to my job, it is what it is. And what it is, I love to do.

Mary and I have shifted back into high gear concerning the many deferred home improvement projects that will make living here easier for us and more attractive to eventual potential buyers. We’re probably going to complete the landscaping (Oh, my aching back!) this year and even be able to enjoy it ourselves for a few.

My writing is taking a new twist. Producing much less for this blog, as you may have noticed but more in other areas.

Having spent most of my life with strong opinions about politics, I find myself more focused these days on formation than application and more on first principles than on current issues. Which is not to say I won’t chime in here from time to time when something particularly egregious or especially important appears on my radar. But I find myself reading the “news” less and history / philosophy more.

I take great joy and comfort in having circled back to old friends, although my connection methods are modern and streamlined in concert with social media. There are folks in my life that I’ve loved and always will and I try to make sure they know who they are.

I can’t say where all this contemplation will lead. But it feels right, so if you’ll excuse me, I have some serious thinking to do.