2016 Winter January 13 Wednesday

32 degrees (feels like 26 degrees) this morning, no walk.

Still have occasional fits of coughing.  I get to thinking I”m over it and then I start again.  Aliene is also coughing.

The Flint, Michigan situation is truly a nightmare, from what little I know of it.  I don’t know enough to comment on it, except if the allegation that children will be affected for life from a mistake by the city or state, it would be the thing any person who was responsible for administrating a city dreaded the most.  

For some reason, I recently have been thinking of the years of being on call “24/7/365”.  (26 years straight).  Regardless of  where you actually were, you were responsible for anything that happened or at least for dealing with anything that happened.  

I even looked up the Quote from “And the Mountains Echoed” that, oddly enough, I read within two weeks when I suddenly had “freedom” from concern about a city.  In the story, the man has been an assistant (perhaps a servant) for his entire adult life to a “Master” who had just died and left everything to him.  He now had freedom (and resources)t o do anything he wanted. 

"Now I was free to do as I wished, but I found the freedom illusory, for what I wished for had been taken from me. They say, Find a purpose in life and live it.  But, sometimes, it is only after you have lived that you recognize your life had a purpose, and likely one you never had in mind”.

The years I spent being responsible for a city, I always wondered what it would be  like to no longer be concerned.  Suddenly I was there (and am now), and I realized that it had simply been my purpose in life at the time.  That was why it never felt like a burden, or really even a concern.  It was just the way it was.  

Even now, over two years later, one thing that seems to happen when I get sick is I have this underlying concern that is still present, about being able to handle any emergency, although the requirement  is no longer there, at least from the perspective of a community emergency.  

Now I feel a different type of responsibility, and I occasionally still feel a little guilty when at quitting time, I don’t continue working on resolving a matter etc. but again, that is just the way it is now.  

I think about time, because, for the first time in my life I actually have the capacity to have more time by “retiring”.  While it is the money, it is a lot more than just money that I keep working.  I am lucky I found an “encore career” that I enjoy and that I feel actually helps people, at least in a small way.  

What always concerns me is that “work expands to fill the time available”  (either personal or job wise).  I noted it is true again now.  Even though I spent well over two hours exercising, now that I have not been able to exercise, I wonder where the two hours go each day that I “save” in not exercising!  I am looking forward to exercising again, and I am sure I will find the time!

That’s it for now, Wednesday, January 13, 2016.