“Your career is like a garden. It can hold an assortment of life’s energy that yields a bounty for you. You do not need to grow just one thing in your garden. You do not need to do just one thing in your career.”

—Jennifer Ritchie Payette

If there’s something that drives me bonkers, it’s when someone tries to pigeonhole me. I’ve said this before and I will say it again and again until the cows come home . . .

People change based on circumstances, experiences and individual preferences. As the photo above states, you’re allowed to change — your mind, career, or dreams, or all three!

I’m not the same person I was last year, last month, when I moved to Alabama, or when I had different careers.

For instance, I prefer heat over being cold. That is a fact. With age and physical changes, extremely high temperatures are no longer ideal — I have to wait for cooler temperatures to run or do yard work. Direct sunlight interferes with my medications.

While I enjoy certain foods, I do not consistently order the same meal at the same restaurant. Restaurants routinely come out with new dishes which I enjoy trying. While I enjoy a coffee from a nationally recognized coffee shop chain, there are other coffee shops available to me that I enjoy as well.

I used to have things planned with precision due to having several children and a full-time job as well as part-time employment. As an empty nester, I now have the luxury to be less stringent and more spontaneous. This also works well with my physical changes. “Depending on how I feel” . . . drives a lot of what I do and accomplish when I am at home.

I used to push myself to accomplish a lot in a day. A large part of this was based in what I witnessed my mother do as a child – she always had a list of what she needed to accomplish each day and drove herself (and my sister and I) nutty trying to get everything done. When I realized that I was too busy to relax and enjoy the here and now, I knocked that shit off.

• I now list 5 goals to accomplish each day.
• I set a timer for 20-25 minutes and accomplish what I can.
• When the timer sounds, I move on to the next task.
• I can come back around to a previous task when finished, if I choose to do so.
• I spend time outside every day – whether it’s walking, rocking on the porch, sitting on the back step with the kittens or hanging clothes on the line.

Life is too short to be rushed, harried and so focused you don’t see what’s happening around you. Being the OCD perfectionist that I am, this act of slowing down and not completing something from start-to-finish in one fell swoop is a learning curve.

Today I: 1) filed some paperwork, 2) bought a giftcard I needed, 3) worked on some mending, 4) did some laundry, and 5) put another coat of paint on the worktable and removed some floor tiles. Anything else, I accomplished was bonus — I also went for an enjoyable walk, played with the kittens, washed out some luggage, read a wee bit, and watched an episode of Outlander. Work. Play. There has to be balance.