I really do intend to give you more of the time I first entered RetComLife, but mini epiphanies keep getting in the way. Since all this is new to me, I am trying to discover the best way to get acclimated to this new world, and new thoughts keep popping up. Here is one of them:

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To tell you the whole story of this post, I need to go back a little bit before I can move forward here. For the last dozen years or so, I have been fixated on the idea of Simplification. During our vacation trips, I have collected dozens of things with the word “Simplify” in them. I didn’t realize how many I had until I started gathering them together for my move. The word “Simplify” has come to me to mean discarding all the things that clutter my life and prevent me from obtaining happiness. Isn’t that something that all of us want, but few have ever really figured out how to get it. Happiness itself is a very cloaked word that has a myriad of definitions. Even though I can’t really define it, it is something, I feel that has been for the most part missing in my life. I am always looking for something better.

One way to simplify is to move from a 2400 square foot house to an eight-hundred-fifty SF apartment in a retirement community.

That is what I did.

In the process, I have eliminated many of the things that take up time and space in life. I don’t know how many hours a week I have spent taking care of a 2.5 acre homestead in the last twenty-one years. The mowing and landscaping takes hours per week. The constant repair of yard work equipment was getting daunting. Then there is the house. A third of it was built almost one-hundred years ago. By moving, I have virtually eliminated all that time, but now the question is:

What do I replace those hours with?

Virtually everything is done for me here. No utility bills or repairs, no lawn work, or maintenance. I have weekly housecleaning service. Even, meals are for the most part provided in the central dining area. About all that leaves to fill my time right now is my computer/blogging things and TV. My wife, due to constant health issues, has been a serious recluse for the last ten-years or more, so we had no social life. Friends have all but disappeared during these years.

I have simplified my life in many areas, but have yet to figure out what to do with all those saved hours? That may just prove harder than the simplification itself. I just didn’t realize how hard it is going to be to find a happy life in retirement community living. Of course, I will continue to fall back on my deaf/Aspie rationalizations as to how difficult it is, but I need to get off my butt and do some positive things to make a happy life. It simply won’t happen by itself, it never does…