Let me be honest with you. I only look busy. I'm not. I do work full time, if you consider that I usually begin at nine or sooner and am paid most days till five. But let's look at this more carefully, shall we? I will get paid for five hours of work today. So this is already half time. Really I worked less than four hours and found time for a three mile walk and nearly an hour in a popular café where I worked on a drawing. My first client only wanted to visit for a half hour, though I get paid for two hours. My second client and I finished after an hour and a half, leaving me time for grocery shopping, an hour with my counsellor whom I see quarterly, and a walk in the neighbourhood. Since returning home I have done my paperwork which ups my time to around four and a half hours, made and ate dinner, washed the dishes and read some of one of our many weekly free newspapers. Now I am writing this nonsense while listening to As It Happens, one of many daily current affairs radio programs offered free of charge by our public broadcaster.
I am going to spend the evening listening to more current affairs radio while working on a painting, reading a novel in Spanish and studying Latin American culture on an online university class I am participating in. I will probably get to sleep a bit on the late side again, especially given that I will be devoting time to prayer and bible reading as well as watching some Spanish language programming on the Internet. I am also reading two Spanish books (one of the essays of Octavio Paz, a very prominent Mexican writer and thinker). I might also have a look at a book called "Narrative Therapy" in the hopes that it will help inform and inspire my work.
I'm not really that busy. I don't have children or grandchildren, which is to say, no dependents, no descendants, no family, no partner, and no organizations or clubs to occupy my time except perhaps a weekly Spanish conversation group I am taking a furlough from. I do have friends I will be seeing this week. Friday after work I will have coffee with my new Colombian friend, a young woman whom I am helping with her English while she supports me with my Spanish. Sunday I will visit my young Mexican friend and we will also do Spanish-English exchange. Tuesday I finish at two and then I will have coffee with another dear friend.
I don't own or watch TV. I can move freely at my preferred pace although at times it does get frenzied. I did spend the last couple of weeks working from home preparing art classes for one of the mental health-addiction teams I work at. It should be very interesting. I will be facilitating six sessions, one for each colour and associating the colour with a famous artist: the first session will be about the colour yellow and I will profile Vincent Van Gogh and seven of his paintings where he used a lot of yellow. The second will be green and Emily Carr; orange and Georgia O'Keeffe; red and Frida Kahlo; blue and Diego Rivera; purple and Claude Monet. I will be giving these presentations while our clients are drawing and painting.
I suppose I could do more, and less. I tend to continue with these and other projects of learning, creating and producing because, you know something? I am not getting any younger. I will be sixty in a year and a half and time has a tendency of moving rather quickly and I intend to be sure that I will have accomplished plenty in the hopes that after I die succeeding generations will be able to draw from my successes and learn from my mistakes.
Just knowing that that is going to happen gives me joy.
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