One Year

May 18 is the one year anniversay of the Mr. Bill's Pond blog and it makes me feel all kinds of good. Just yesterday a friend mentioned that I have completely thrown my life away so I could position myself to keep up with the blog. I said that I have plenty of other interests, I work on the pond every day, and he replied "It's all aimed toward taking pictures and creating comments regarding the biology interplay". He then became very critical, "you won't promote your own business, and refuse to even think about a normal job, and none of this seems healthy at your age." I finally had to tell him that the weblog and pond are just available, fortunately, because if they weren't I would just be doing nothing as I didn't promote my business or get a normal job. So what is happening to me? A feeling of "enough" entered my life several months ago. For a while I thought it just meant that I needed to find a different profession, or a different type of work, but that wasn't it. No employment that I looked at could have held my interest very long so I decided that maybe it was just that I needed to work for myself, and that has been better, but ultimately, I don't really care about it either. My friend was right, I don't want to work any more, for now. I started working 40 years ago when I was 12, and even though I spent 26 years in college, and several more years as a kind of burned-out hippie, I always had a job. Also, even though I have always been phenomenal in any job I've ever had, I've made very little money and owned very few things. I don't want to continue this routine for the years that I have left. And how many would that be? I have no way of knowing, but will assume that it's a good deal less than what I've already experienced. The other night I was reading a blog and the writer, a person in his mid-50's, referred to himself as middle-aged. I hope he makes 108, but the odds are not good. Middle aged is late 30's, early 40's for American men and I'm long past that. Without letting anyone know (including myself), I have been reducing my expenses to the minimum possible point. Instead of figuring out ways to make more money, I have decided to figure out ways to need less, and spend the rest of my time doing whatever I want to do, whenever I want to do it. Now that I've finally opened up, I realize that I should have put in a better garden. I don't know how long I can live on eggplant, broccoli and cabbage. Anyway, there are those fish.