Emerging

It's been a strange year (well, longer than that really) as I have tried to get accustomed to the fact that I am no longer who I was for the past two plus decades. From when G was born in April 1981, I defined myself as a SAHM (stay at home mother), and then as a homeschooling SAHM. And now I'm not that anymore.

I have found it so hard to adjust to this. I am too old to 'retrain' - by the time I qualified at anything I would be 60. There are a million things to do here at home on our land, but I just can't seem to get organised. I have always done my 'stuff' around the day to day needs of my children, and somehow I can't seem to find a new framework on which to build.

There is also this lost feeling, and a tendency to withdraw into the boring chores and become duller and duller. But I know I have to step out of my comfort zone or I will fall into decrepit old age very quickly.

So........ I have set up an online place to sell my books - it is terrifying even though I know in my head that no one is going to tell me, 'this stuff is crap - what do you think you are doing putting it out there?'. I have no idea how much is actually sold on Felt, but that is my starting point.

And........ even more terrifying, I have been doing a night class on beekeeping, and last week when J and I went to Auckland to see S for his 26th birthday, I bought a whole bunch of equipment to get started with a beehive! When I get back from our holiday south, I 'just' have to put the kitset hive together, paint it, and then get a nucleus and I'll be up and running. It's exciting, but very scary.

This holiday......... longest holiday without kids ever. Earlier this year we had our first holiday without kids in the 28 years since G was born, but we stayed with Mac's sister. This will be the first holiday in that time without family of any kind. And five nights out of nine will be just Mac and me. It should be lovely, but there's a nervous little part of me worries that we haven't spent this amount of time alone without house / land work to do for over 28 years - what if he finally realises what a terrible mistake he made getting lumbered with me? Mind you if he hasn't got that figured out after nearly 40 years, he's probably not going to now, right? (Our first date was on 4th December 1979.)

I've been waking in the night hot flushing and hardly able to breathe from panic attacks lately, thinking about all these things, but I know I just have to keep pushing myself forward. There's living or there's dying, and having decided that suicide is not the way for me to die, I need to make life as interesting and fun as I can - even if that is scary to the point of panic!