redrum liatnetop

 

I'd be the first to tell you what a cold-weather wuss I am. During the Winter I do what I must, but it usually keeps me inside for the duration, and normally within some comfortable distance from one of the heating vents(which I often have to negotiate with one of my cats).
   Having left my dayjob last year at the end of June, it's now been
 six months since I've worked. The Summer and Fall went by with-
 out a hitch, doing occasional gigs and teaching equally occasional students, but the first Winter one doesn't work seems to be much more significant.

This is the first time in 27 years when I haven't
worked on January 2nd! The day after New
Year's has always been an all-hands-on-deck
occasion in the workplace. No matter what other days
you could finagle out of them, that one was
always off-limits. And in my last job it was
the shittiest day of the year: packed with 
clients and non-stop action the whole 7.5
hours. You were numb afterwards- the only
consolation being a Corona or several that
evening, plus the fact that you probably weren't going to have any days any worse than the one you just got through..

So it was wonderful missing out on all that
fun for the first time in my adult life(lack of pain-what a concept!), and it
is wonderful not having to traipse out in this
kind of arctic weather every morning. Everything in Winter seems to take more time and trouble, so it's nice to not have to go through all those additional steps: put on extra layers, start the vehicle, scrape the ice off and then head off 
to do the thing all day.

 I love it for what I don't have to do anymore, but a nasty cold Winter does kind of keep you house-bound. Ahh for a nice Winter like the practically non-existent one we had in 2012--that would be perfect for my first Winter season as a retiree. But nooo, I have to get a bone-crunching freezeout Winter, where zero becomes balmy!

This house-bound thing(the incipient Jack Torrance Syndrome)was a concern when I was about two months into retirement. It's very liberating of course, being suddenly unbound from the shackles of the weekly schedule, but you do feel antsy since you're used to doing something all day. Since then I've kinda settled in. Faced the void that's created by all this newfound time, and learned to embrace rather than dread it. I've accepted sloth as my personal savior. 

But I can see the danger of having sloth, sweet sloth, become my personal executioner as well. The mind can turn in on itself and create problems you didn't have- or magnify the ones you've already got to leviathan proportions. I don't think there's potential murder, backwards or forwards here(re the title of this blog), and if anybody gets sliced up into pieces I think it would be me by my two cats, whom bleeding-heart here allowed them to keep their claws. Still, things could get a little weird here in the dead of Winter. 

So I'm wary on this my first non-working Winter. Not only the challenge of keeping Jack Frost from nipping at my toes, but Jack Torrance nipping at my psyche. Like all Winters, working or not, I'm really just focused on the prize: March. Well, whenever all this is done with for another year. 

A friend and I were recently discussing living as we do in a time-based reality. And as I remember, we were looking at the disadvantages(as well as being 'trapped' in the moment): the transience, nothing lasts. When applied to Winter however- and particularly a harrowingly cold one like we're experiencing-it's a happy thought. This too shall pass.

And in the meantime, Danny's not here, Mrs Torrance..