Some days

Some days just are, some need help to be, and some days, well, aren't much beyond being forgotten. Yeah, not original, but there are days I get to the end and wonder what the hell happened and what I did. My Dad used to call them puttering days where you seem waste the time on one small thing after another, and soon forget what all you did that day.

I was reading that you perceive time differently as you age. While time doesn't change, it's always the hope there's always tomorrow that extend and expands your perception of time, but as you get old(er) that perception changes to know there are fewer tomorrows left in your life. When you're young, time is irrelevant. When you're old, it's everything.

It's why I retired to pursue personal projects. While I still have some health and fitness left to get over, I retired to pursue nature and landscape photography and continue hiking in Mt. Rainier NP, or so I thought and keep thinking. And to work on a photography guide for Mt. Rainier NP and some projects with the early history of the NP before and after its designation.

So days that just exist beyond getting through them become more significant. You know it's just another day, and sure tomorrow is still tomorrow, but you wonder how many more are there when the past is that and the future is shorter. It's harder as you age to realize some days are the same as then because you wonder when you go, you'll be judged by the number of them you choose to get through.

Not really. God has more important issues than people goofing off, but sometimes it feels like it, like someone in God's shop is tracking us and counting. It's really all self-imposed, internal guilt for the days we just don't feel like engaging the world outside of our own.

I call them lounge days. Since my home also has my office now, working it just what I do around everything else at home. I can take breaks, do housework, take naps, read books, watch TV or whatever else I want around doing or working on my photography or working on the Mt. Rainier photography guide and history projects.

I can also just wander into the world through my computer. I read 3-5 newspapers daily, some days I go and get the print version along with on-line ones not available in print locally, and the rest of the days I read the free on-line ones. Sorry, I refuse to pay for the on-line WSJ. Rupert Murdoch already gets my money elsewhere.

And I can wander through the various forums, ready blogs, view other photographers' Website, or just work on my own blogs, which are probably too much verbage anyway, but it's the freedom we have these days. One thing I don't do is live on facebook or twitter. While I'm on those Websites, I'm not an overtly social person to live there.

I have two types of lounge days. Sunny ones and rainy ones. And yes, it's weather related. While being mildly-to-moderately Dysthymic I'm also have mild-to-moderate Seasonal Affective Condition. I refuse to call it a "disorder" because it's not a mental health problem, it's just who I am, like many others. I do react to the weather and living in the Puget Sound area sometimes doesn't help.

But I know having lived in Arizona, extended sunny and warm, and especially hot, days are overwhelming. I need seasons and I need weather, real Pacific Northwest weather, and as bad as it gets, it's the best overall for me. And it creates the sunny and rainy lounge days. Each with their own facets and attributes. Each admired and hated for the same. For what they are and what they aren't.

And that's where both are necessary, in my life, and for lounging around and puttering the day away. Each time the days are different, so really they are significant and not wasted. We do that other places, driving in traffic, standing in lines, waiting for appointments. So lounging at home? Just maybe it's not as bad as people describe or judge.

Because you're not waiting on or for someone else, only yourself. You're in your own world, on your own time, at your own speed. That's hard to beat anymore. And I don't see God minding that, being yourself.