Homebody

I spend a lot of my time at home these days.  I wonder if this is a thing about aging?  I don't feel older but I seem to value my living space more than ever.  I live downtown and I stay home evenings.  Movies are expensive and I don't like to stay out late.  The need to get to bed early, sleep well, and wake up well-rested and refreshed for work have taken priority.  Recently I have been joined to the choir in my church.  I admitted to the choir director and also to one of the other members today that I came into the position less than willingly.  I was pressganged into it.  They seem to like my voice and I think there is a consensus that I need to make myself useful there and this isn't such a bad thing.  However singing in church does nothing to pay my rent every month and for this reason I have to give my job priority, while still splicing into my routine whatever of the church seems appropriate without having to trade off other things that matter.  It should be no surprise then that the vast majority of those who do the most volunteer work in the church are either retired or don't have to work, or don't have to work fulltime. 

I have had to forego Tuesday evening choir practice.  It's too late for me.  Seven-thirty to nine means not getting home till nine thirty or later and I usually try to be in bed by ten.  Too late.  My friends are generally aware of this and so all my socializing takes place some weekdays just after work, or on the rare morning I have free and Sunday afternoons.  Saturdays I need to rest and not bother much with others, given the therapeutic intensity of the social/professional time and energy I put in with my clients all week.

Mine has become rather a circumscribed life.  Following church today, after we'd all had coffee and face time together I walked almost all the way home.  After five miles I bussed the rest of the way.  It was just after two when I got home.  I had lunch, relaxed, read, went online a bit, listened to interesting radio programs on the CBC, watched a Perry Mason video (I have been seeing tonnes of Perry Mason programs, every day.  At first it was the older ones dubbed in Spanish.  More recently it's the newer episodes in English.  I spent time reading Karen Armstrong's latest book, "Fields of Blood" where she argues most convincingly against the current nonsense creeping around about religion being the cause of most violence.   I had dinner,  worked on a painting, bringing it to a satisfying completion.

Strangely, I don't feel at all restless or confined, though I've been home for the past six hours.  I will likely paint a little more, read some, maybe watch a video in Spanish, then trundle off to bed for an early sleep.  Boring.  And so beautiful.