I am a person who believes you should be grateful and content with what you have.
Bob Proctor says if you are not improving then you are going the other way. In other words, if you are satisfied that’s not good enough because you will start going backwards.
I once participated in a debate in High School arguing that Dissatisfaction is Necessary for Progress. I think from memory that I was debating against the topic, yet today I believe I would have to agree with that premise. If you are so comfortable that you never do anything, everything might just fall away from you.
If you are totally content in your relationship that you do not bother investing in it anymore, you might soon find that you have no relationship. I have seen this phenomenon portrayed in a number of movies where middle-aged men are suddenly shocked to discover that their loyal faithful wife was not as satisfied and content with their situation as he was; the source of many a divorce past middle-age!
As I now do the circuits of professional business women I am gratified to see so many mothers with children who are promoting on-line business as a means of promoting family and work – what just a few years ago we talked about as work-life balance. I am especially happy to see that there are even a number of still married women in harmony with their spouse doing a home business and taking care of their children together.
Now I guess you’ll have to put me into the ancient or twentieth-century box, whatever you want to call women of my age – if that’s what you need to do. I feel like I have to argue the case for mothers, for working mothers, not just for women. In fact, when I think of our situation, I note the issue was not even just of mothers – we did a role change and it was my husband who had zero support while taking care of the children!
Personally, I have never really allowed myself to be categorized or put in a pigeonhole, so allow yourself to be exposed to a few new or different ideas as I continue to express myself.
I’m participating in a “Business like a Queen” Workshop, on-line this week, as a result of a workshop I did last week, which I got to from a webinar I did a month ago. You know how it goes? Just one thing leads to another.
Can you tell that I do not just sit around, being content and letting life just pass me by? But actually, I did want to watch a bit of my favourite series. No time today.
It’s Monday.
We slept in. It is becoming a Monday habit. Josef works in the afternoon on Mondays. Every other day he is even up in the middle of the night to write his revelations. Either he is preparing a sermon, or a paper, or writing on his book. So often lately, Mondays I do not seem to manage to jump out of bed early enough to do my routine.
If you want to make a relationship work, you have to be prepared to work on it. Well, we really do. And for me sometimes it means postponing my morning routine for a day or two. I am retired after all.
We spent the morning sitting over breakfast discussing God and the world after discovering that we could not find any link to the ten o’clock prayer meeting. Our candle was burning, we began with our own prayers, then decided to join our spiritual community over breakfast.
When we couldn’t log in to the community, it became our own personal couple sharing. Sometimes it seems we just live our lives side by side, each doing his/her own thing. No need to talk, no reason to say anything. Sometimes I even panic and think we aren’t close enough if we don’t have anything to say. Sometimes I do say something and he misunderstands or does not hear me correctly. Sometimes I feel guilty because he is so full of inspiration about his writings and I don’t even want to read them. Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to read them, but how often has he asked me to give feedback, only to have three other responses which he has already integrated and then I should read the whole thing through again and redo my feedback?
No, sorry, I can’t work like that. I do love giving feedback. I am a great critique. But don’t give me anything you are not serious about. Josef and I talk enough about all his ideas. I am constantly adding my input and I’m sure some of that rubs off onto his work.
So, I guess you could say we have a certain understanding. Or at least, I do. Maybe sometimes I don’t express myself clearly enough. Funny how I seem to prefer to put it into writing. It’s the reflection that helps me to understand what is really going on.
We spent the next hour or so, after the first ten minutes of searching for a zoom link, we spent the next hour discussing the American Presidency, the Austrian political tolerance and how we can contribute to making this world a better place. The discussion continued during lunch after which I made the coffee and then Josef left for work.
It was only then that I noticed that I had not taken my morning drugs. That has become part of my morning routine when I take a glass of water before and after cycling for thirty minutes.
Look how I’m going to start colour coding my blog entries. If you don’t want to read my gory health details, just skip this colour. (Still have to figure out the programming for the background colour. Am not perfect. Will just post anyhow and do it later :-))
My goal and mission right now is to figure out how I want to serve humanity from now on. I’ve already made it clear that my project for 2020 was my health and then had to do a bit of a back-tracker as I discovered that my next knee operation will not happen before next year.
Lo and Behold! I just got a call from the other hospital. What if they can do my operation for me now after all? I was all into the idea of a second surgery by the same doctor who said I’ll have to wait four or five months. And he said that before our new lock-down and rising Corona cases here in Austria. I am aware that many hospitals have been pushing through their elective surgeries in anticipation of a future lock-down emergency situation. I did not take the call today but am now confronted with the decision – will I go to the other hospital now or would I actually refuse the option to get operated just in the hope of getting the surgeon that I want?
I no longer have the luxury of private insurance. While I had it at the UN, I hardly took advantage of it since I was still catering for my whole family and the private fees are quite somewhat higher than the national health care fees.
You know why blogging is so hard? Because you want to be honest without making a fool of yourself. Be yourself they say. Be authentic. So now I’ll have to figure out how to colour code this part of my blog. Is everything to do with my health a gory detail? Some of it is actually a political commentary. Yet I pride myself on being diplomatic and apolitical!
I can’t hold back however on expressing my thoughts on some aspects that I have experienced. After all, I am also still waiting for what I believe to be my rightful pension from the UN. How can it be that I still only receive as much as I did after seven years of duty, despite another two years of active service and a so-called supplementary pension, which doesn’t even bring me beyond what I had before?
Now is this where I have to be grateful because I am still much better off than many other women “in my position”?
I think this is where I start marking some of my stuff for my memoirs as I do not see myself publishing some of these comments at this time.
Would you call that marketing for my biography? Haha. I haven’t even started that yet. Or have I? Years of diaries…. Hmmm. Another project.
To be continued…
Originally written 9 Nov 2020, now edited and published on 26 Nov.