I'm back! It's been years and there have been many changes in my life, but I am retired and what a story it is. I've just been reviewing the first six posts in this blog and realizing how idealistic I was as well as overwhelmed. I'm still overwhelmed in many ways but I'm on a new path ... Seeking to attain minimalism in my life. It's a long story so let's let it reveal itself in bits and pieces as I begin this new blog again.

Recently I joined a sort of self help group online that is designed to help me get in touch with what's important and to let go of what's not important. This is particularly necessary at this point in my life because my own daughter has rejected me, denied me access to my granddaughters, and broken my heart in more ways than she can imagine. To this day I don't know what I've done wrong except that she says I am a bad role model. To deal with this I have joined the Daily Om. It includes Daily Reflections and ideas about what is important in life, particularly in my own life, and I think it provides a good start on a Daily Journal. I hope someday my granddaughters will read this and no a little bit better who I am and how much I love them.

Today's Daily Om starts with a famous quote bye one of my earlier influences, Joseph Campbell.

"The call to adventure is the point in a person's life when they are first given notice that everything is going to change, whether they know it or not."-Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey

Absolutely, I know that everything is about to change. With a whole lot of encouragement, read pushing and insisting and promising and assuring, Marina convinced me to buy this house on Compton Drive. She denies that now, says it was 100% my decision, but as I drive around this town and note the many houses that I loved and they hated, it's hard for me not to recognize her undue influence in my life and my decisions.

So here I am, living on my Social Security, and house that cost more than that. Add to that the fact that I no longer have a family and it's hard not to be depressed. But I have a plan! I am going to survive! More on that later.

I guess the point is, as I noted when I first began this blog, we baby boomers did not prepare for our old age. We coddled our children, giving them everything they asked, sometimes at great personal and financial expense, and we assumed they would be there for us when we needed them. We confused our parents and our grandparents with this new generation that faces so many more challenges and so much more commercial power, and it is hard put to make sense of their own lives much less anyone elses.

I am going to do my best to make sense of this world we live in while trying to figure out how I am going to survive. Plus I want to do more than survive -- I want to thrive! As my dear sister Kim reminds me, I should be doing the fun things now, painting, artwork, crafting, walking Bentley! But what am I doing? I'm worrying about stuff. What stuff? Kim asked. And I said the stuff of what I will be leaving behind. The messes I don't want someone else to have to clean up when I'm gone. The things that weigh me down and that I yearn to be free of. This new de-cluttering process is intended to get me there. I will deal with the physical things first, and then the others.

Today is September 1st. I pledged with my online support group to get rid of one thing today in my search for a clutter-free life. Today I gave away the giant blow-up lit up Christmas decoration that Tommy and Marina bought for the house and for the girls. I don't think I'll be celebrating Christmas for a while. Without my girls in my life, Christmas has lost its meaning. I will have to find a new meaning for it now.

Tomorrow it will be my job to give up two things. September 2, two things. The adventure begins.

Below I have provided some pictures of the people I consider my best friends.