Lou

I think I have reached the stage where i no longer have to do anything to relax. It's become status quo for me. I rarely have to deal with anyone who brings tension to my life these days. If someone starts to do that, I can easily elect to find an alternative source of humanity. Luckily, I'm not related to anyone who stresses me out. I generally wake up in a good mood and wait for the day to get even better.

The pre-dawn hours are some of the best of any day. It's quiet. Coffee tastes better than than it does at any other time. I can spend a leisurely amount of time going through the ritual I've developed. The first thing I do is open my journal and do a quick once-over of the stuff that gets automatically imported there. Then I review "on this day." I've been using the same app, Day One, for 11 years, so I have plenty to look back over. Today's interesting entries were from 2020 when I wrote quite a bot about how weird it was during the early days of the pandemic, when grocery store shelves were empty and people were panic buying. After my journal, I move on to do the same thing with my photographs, which are liberally sprinkled with photos of my grandkids at all different ages. Only after doing all that, do I take a look at the daily fire hose of WTF, also known as the headlines. As horrible as things are, I am doing a good job of depersonalizing it.

I'm a believer in creating happy spaces. My little home office is pleasantly lit. Everything is suitably comfortable. I can listen to music if I feel like it or watch something, which I rarely do, but can if it suits me. I always have a tasty beverage on hand. I may have to work on making my workspace a little less relaxing because taking a nap with my laptop has become a new pastime. How delightful to be able to just surrender to every urge to get 40 winks. I keep meaning to start using an essential oil diffuser that I used to keep running all the time for just a little more feng shui.

I have a great view from my window. I'll be moving my bird feeders to where I can see them better. My house borders on a stretch of woodlands. My neighborhood was built in the 60s, and we have many established, mature trees around. I see all kinds of wildlife, from squirrels, to rabbits, raccoons, and opossums, as well as a long list of birds: cardinals, wrens, house finches, titmice, blue jays, catbirds, chickadees, goldfinches, owls, red tail hawks, crows, sparrows, robins, orioles and more.

During my earlier years, I didn't always have the money to have a smoothly working climate control system. I spent too may years relying on expensive space heaters and window units. Not now buddy. I can adjust the temperature to whatever I want right from my phone or computer. It's such a luxury. My high school years were spent in a 100-year-old farmhouse with no air conditioning and heat from a wood stove. I survived just fine, but, man, I love these new fangled devices.

My days are spent now working on projects that interest me. I read what I want to read. My biggest energy consumption is finding ways to be creative, not trying to calm people frustrated by technology that isn't acting as it should. I haven't had to reset anyone's password in over a month. A professional lifetime where every day was a confrontation with things that didn't work has been supplanted by my lovingly tended little home tech environment where just about everything that happens to predictable and expected. That's the life for me.

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