I have managed my later years in the same manner that I handled art shows. What is on the public display wall should be counted. Private items stashed behind the booth, although very necessary to put an organized display together, do not count and are not for public review or concern.
If you aren’t an artist, have not walked in my shoes, sat at my easel, and can not look back on many years of putting up display booths at various art shows, I do not expect you to understand or accept this model of living. For me, it has been comforting and the only reasonable means available for me to cope with living alone, having limited funds, and addressing whatever hurdle I deemed important to surmount at any given moment.
I take consolation in worldly items that I have come to cherish. They are my memories, not dear to any other person. A small tin box that one might cast aside as old and useless, holds my thoughts of a bygone day. It sat in a bathroom harming no one. I saw it daily and it helped to heal me. I did not have to pick up that small tin box or clutch it to my chest. A glance was all I needed.
Years ago, I almost discarded a ball of dust while clearing out the very bottom of a box in the garage basement. That was in the days when I first went back to Illinois Avenue in hopes of rebuilding my life. The box had been in the basement since we moved there in 1971. I picked up that ball of dust and discovered it was a tiny carved dog that belonged with a set of two others my Aunt Sis had given me decades earlier. Those little dogs had made a life journey with me to North Carolina and Texas and were witnesses to chapters I had long since forgotten. I treasured those little dogs as I treasured my Aunt Sis, and I was delighted to find that tiny carved dog. I am an artist. It is my job in this lifetime and my right to handle, treasure, and keep dear those things that give me solace.
If I am not a model whom you wish to admire and follow, it may astonish you to learn that I do not now care to tread in your shoes or trouble myself in knowing what my neighbors, family, or friends choose to place in their own surroundings. Coping is a personal path no one has shared with me and the contingency plans that I have used were seldom shared with anyone before implementation.
Trust me. I had many plans. Viewing my Job Jar sitting on a crowded kitchen shelf, one might conclude that I have left many tasks incomplete. But over on another shelf, there is a folder with lists of what has been completed. You will never know how many times I backtracked and finished a task that had sat mellowing in some corner of my home for a year or more.
I have never been bored. There was always something to accomplish. Given to recognizing priorities, mine will always be different from yours. You keep yours and I will keep mine. End of story.