The taxes are done, the house is clean, the sun is shining. I’ve been back to the gym after a week of repelling Viral Invaders. I am full of tea and a bit of the Easter chocolate that Nicola’s father sent us. I am pondering a new screenplay idea that fell into my head while I was washing dishes this morning. I have U2 tickets for the US fall tour. I am reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I have watched three movies this week.
When I was in my teens and early 20’s, I imagined a Big Life for myself. And I’m having it; I just didn’t know that the real payoff of big risk and hard work would be the saturation and joy of these moments that I would have called small back then.
I just ran across a similar sentiment recently: http://christinekane.com/blog/the-boringness-of-success/
I’ll admit that I’m pretty much done with ambition. I used to have careerist goals, now I just want to cross the threshold where I can have my comfortable little life laying around the house with my wife and dog. I’d retire tomorrow if I thought it was at all possible to not run out of money. The simplest of pleasures have turned out to be plenty for me.
Sometimes it seems like I don’t know I’m happy until afterward. It’s good to feel happy right when you are, so good for you.
“I just didnât know that the real payoff of big risk and hard work would be the saturation and joy of these moments that I would have called small back then.”
….Amen!!! 🙂
The wet clouds wash the Peaks and then sunshine sweeps the geraniums in my east window. The taste of a cafe mocha shared with my girlfriend at the coffeehouse still lingers. I’m filling out the forms to take the job at the fire lookout east of town and it amuses me to put “Annie Dillard” into the blank place that wants you to name colleagues and friends. It’s only a slight fiction. Oh alright, I’ll do it right…but later, after I’ve added the names of other fellow seekers of “saturation and joy.” Edward Abbey, Penelope Lively, Mary Oliver, Kelley Eskridge…
Living your own life, your own way. Wasn’t that really the big dream in its essence at 15 and 22?
The difference is now you’re home. On most days, don’t you just want to do a joyous backflip, giggling how you are the luckiest girl in the world?