Blog 2128 – 07.23.2021

This Is The Day

“This is the day that the Lord and I have made, we will rejoice and be glad in it.” is a far cry from “Different day same ole same ole” or some even more explicit version of the same bored or disappointed remark you hear from time to time. Many young and older workers live for the weekends and the expression abbreviated TGIF is less a prayer of thanks than it is a anticipation of a fun couple of days off work before another lack luster work week.

I find myself on this my last work assignment contemplating things that I hope to get done on the weekends. Over most of the last year and a half, during the great economic shut down due to Covid-19, I got a taste of what retired life would be like and I quickly learned how to fill up my days. A life where everyday is a holiday or weekend is both the dream and secret fear of many a worker. Dream because they do not like their work and fear because they are afraid of how they will pay their bills without the income of a job or how they will ever find something else to fill up their days.

I recall my dad when he retired at sixty-two saying that he just about went stir crazy at first. He even got a part time job as a night watchman to try to fill up his days and nights, just to have something to do. He soon learned to busy himself with things that he enjoyed doing more than work, i.e. hunting, fishing and going to swap markets and flea markets where he bought broken shovels, axes, hammers, things that just needed a new handle. In no time, he was known all over town as the man to go to to get a good deal on hand tools. Dad even found a handle factory that was going out of business and filled his garage full of handles of all types that he got for pennies on the dollar of their real value, buying up the last of their inventory. He quickly recouped his investment and had a weekend yard sale every Saturday mornings where he did a nice business selling repaired shovels, axes, hammers and other implements that he had repaired, along with fishing weights of all sizes and shapes that he had formed himself in molds with melted plumbers lead. I think my dad may have inadvertently shorten his own life by breathing the lead fumes off all the lead in those sinkers that he produced during his retirement years. But, he stayed busy right up till the end doing the things that he enjoyed doing, but had never found the time to do while he was working a day job.

Many a man or woman thinks that they will have time when they retire to do the thing or things that they always wanted to do full time like read, write, sew, or play golf, etc, but soon learn that many hobbies lose their appeal when you spend too much time at them. Some find volunteer work helps fill their golden years others happen upon crafts or things like gardening that help them to fill the time.

I thought like many writers than I would write that great American novel, but even with a year and a half of free time I never got around to it. Perhaps I will yet. It is on my Things To Do List. I do plan to at some point try to organize my over five years of daily blogs and make some kind of living trust that will pay to keep this theencouragingword.co domain open and available for years to come in case someone wants to read it.

I am encouraged to see that stuff that I have written some time back is still being read and that the list of those following my blog continues to grow.

I do not have all the answers, indeed I am still discovering the questions, but I find if I take responsibility for the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart that I can indeed be acceptable in my own sight and perhaps that is the first step of discovering that I am at the very least co-creator, co-lord, and co-redeemer of my world. Creator, Lord, Redeemer it is busy work to be sure. Some Mormons in their mythology/faith believe that in the next world they may individually become a god of their own world. Perhaps, in a very real sense we already are gods as surely as we are God’s. I have more than a sneaky suspicion that is Who and Whose we truly are, just biding our time awaiting bigger and bigger, better and better assignments. He or she who is faithful over a little shall be given greater and greater responsibility. That seems to be one of those universal principles.

Life is what you make it. Enjoy. TGIF.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FgP076Q0NvmBsbn4NeJS8V6LmoJIivqo/view?usp=drivesdk

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