It’s coming together, this new house.
There are things I’d like to do, but they are improvements as opposed to fixes, desired not required. Get the ceiling redone as smooth vs. this post-popcorn texture; redo the floors; replace some fans and lights. But all of this is indulgence, and not necessary.
It’s good, too, that we got the place in working order. Money is not what it was in California. I guess I haven’t talked about it much, but the move to Florida meant a deep, but voluntary, pay cut. Ah but “pay cut” sounds so violent and helpless, and this is something we did willingly in surrender, so let’s instead maybe call it a “transaction of time and money.”
I feel a pride, and with it the guilt I almost always feel alongside any pride, for making that transaction. Or, I want to feel a pride. I want to be proud that, in opting to leave money and status for time with family I did a noble thing. Yet here I am, making less money and having less status, spinning wheels trying to measure the resultant increase in “family time.”
You know how you know things are a certain way, that they are true and that a situation is as you know it to be, yet you still act as if you don’t know it? It’s not about acknowledging that reality, it’s about permitting yourself to be satisfied. That’s where I struggle. Not in happiness, which I have in spades, but in doneness – the satisfaction of completion. Always bothered by having not yet arrived at some contented state of finished, when once can finally relax and be mindful of the present.
It’s just another part of what I wrote yesterday about learning to live in a state of transition – just phrased another way. To not be seeking some future “job well done” place, to instead be happy with the last breath, most recent beat of the heart, or the comfortable temperature in the room.
“What greater wealth is there than to own your life and to spend it on growing?”
If you can name it, you can work on it, right? I’m working on it.