The Sunshine Day

I am still diligently working to keep those"stoic philosophical" ideas in my head.  Again, basically it is in a nutshell..... try to make decisions with a "cool, calm demeanor" and to promote HAVING a "cool, calm, demeanor"..... FOCUS your limited energies on things you CAN control and exert change in..... and LIMIT or even ELEMINATE your focus on those things that you CANNOT control or exert change in.  

It seems so simple..... but it is NOT really that simple to follow when we are bombarded with stimuli from everywhere all the time.  But, I can report that when I can keep those "rules" in my mind, they DO help me and have been beneficial.  

My bite guard situation the other day is a bit of a "partially successful" case in point.  I have to admit the experience left me exhausted, and that 3:30am bedtime made the next day rough to navigate in many ways.  BUT.... I think I handled the (temporary) LOSS of my bite guard BETTER than I have on the few other occasions where it has occurred over the decades.  I had to do a helluva lot of running around, but instead of getting flustered and frustrated to the point where I would literally begin to sob (if you do not have TMJ, you would  not really understand the impact of not having your bite guard.... it CAN be that emotional) and end up losing all mental focus..... I instead channeled my mind into remaining as calm as I could muster, and kept carefully searching (and searching and searching and searching) all the different potential areas I had been across the day.  Keeping the focus on what I COULD do (search) to help, and working to ignore the things I could not control (What if it was GONE?  What if the dog had eaten it?  What if it fell out of my pocket in some random place during all the journey of the day?) helped me.  

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I am looking forward to hopefully finding some friends at the tail-end of the Retiree's Cigar Group today.  But, even if they had left before I am able to get there, I have more of my "Hidden Valley Road" book to read as a backup.  

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From  a "stoic philosophical" perspective, I am trying to think through in my mind, my pipe smoking.  I am not sure where all my thoughts fit, however.  I tend to THINK I should be able to control and make decisions on potentially returning to pipes in a way that is within a framework that feels occasional and appropriate.  But, in some other ways, I am wondering if perhaps the sheer joy I have with pipes and pipe tobaccos is perhaps something I cannot exert any sort of meaningful control over?  If the latter is the case, perhaps there is no hope of me returning to them in a truly managed sense?  Yet, I am not really sure.  When I get more time, I will have to reason through it more to try to figure it out.

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I have also been giving A LOT more thought towards retirement.  Not that it is eminent.  But, I am starting to realize that I have considerable worries, anxieties, and concerns about this sort of major transition in life.  I am thinking I may start to try to categorize and write out these thoughts, perhaps once or twice a week here, so I can better try to work through them.  I am hoping that by doing so, I may be able to transition to retirement in a happy, good way.

PipeTobacco