My Retreat From Working Life

One of my students drew me!

I’ve been bringing the classroom plants home.

At last summer arrives to Los Angeles and with her we have enough warmth to sit outside and bask.  I am summerizing dear old Moss Cottage.  Replacing a very old rug in the “library”.  That’s the wall of bookshelves near the window by a desk that looks out onto the lane.  I sit there almost every evening and write while the occasional passerby walk their hounds up the steep hill.  Sometimes they spot me behind the window and I give a wave or nod.

I’m having a difficult time imagining the chains of working life just falling away.  I’m ready to embark on a new voyage.  The passage is uncertain, there isn’t a map, or even a guide.   I think I’m going to need a gap year to sort everything out.  I want simple.  I want slow.

Visions of France continue dancing in my head.   It seems wherever one throws a dart on the map of France there are darling villages to explore.   I never considered leaving my beloved state, but the affordability of a new life in France is tempting.   For a childless cat lady like myself without family nearby, relocating to the other side of the planet is in the realm of the possible.  But first my retreat from working life.  I will probably never be able to pull myself away from this place, this California, this Los Angeles, this cottage, but we’ll see.  In the meantime I’m making a Google Sheets spreadsheet of villages that fit my criteria of future forever homes.

Tell me what is happening with your one wild and precious life?