27 June 2017

Lovely sunrise this morning, though I didn’t take any photo’s. Work was busy, but short – I left at twelve to collect a colleague from her Guesthouse and take her to the airport. From there I went home – lovely! Or so I thought until I saw my gate had been tampered with – turns out the contractors decided to come back today, unannounced, to work on the property next to mine. And for some unknown reason it was decided to trespass on my property and climb over the wall back & forth! I feel extremely uncomfortable in my home having a couple of strangers in my garden! Never mind the tire tracks across my lawn and the cement in my backyard! I’ve locked myself in – but I’m not comfortable.

Fortunately I hadn’t planned on working in the garden – there are some pot plants needing attention, which they got today! My chives appreciate the attention! Plus, with the freshly cut chives, the radishes and the tomatoes, I’ll have a lovely home-grown salad tonight! And since I have some time, I’ll cook myself my own special chicken-in-rice dinner!

Vegetables from my garden

Ok, they're not very big - but delicious!

I have quite a lot on my mind these days. This blog was meant to be an outlet for some of those. We all have some things we’re afraid to share with anyone for fear of … well, loosing something. And there’s nothing more wonderful than reading someone else going through or having gone through exactly the same thing! It’s not always big things – sometimes it’s something small, even silly. One of the reasons I started writing again, was to share my silly or serious, small or big, fears or pleasures.

Well, here goes a biggie: Retirement. Yeah, I know I’ve only just turned fifty – but it isn’t really that long a way off. Time flies, when you’re having fun – and my life is a lot of fun, even work! I don’t actually want to retire – apart from the financial fact that I can’t afford to – but work is my link to society. Sever that link and I may become actually anti-social! I’ve already had some mild aversion to going outside my home – like the weekly aversion to grocery shopping. It’s not just the lack of service, or even rude behavior of shop-staff. In East London I had the same kind of episodes when I decided to go to the beach … I always pushed myself out the door, and once I was out, I was fine. But in East London I was alone, the project finished, everybody had left and I didn’t have to go to work. Even in Pretoria I had the same little episodes when I had decided to go for a drive or something. It’s not agoraphobia, because it’s not the outdoors or outside I want to avoid. It’s also not people or crowds, because there weren’t always people where I planned to go. It’s going beyond my comfort zone, I think. Yet I never have any issues leaving to go to work. It’s not really a problem, yet – but what happens if I should retire? Would I stop pushing myself past the aversion, imprisoning myself in my home? Well, how’s that for a nightmare?