Staying home

Is it just part of growing old if you don’t want to go anywhere in the evenings? We were out of town all weekend, had dinner with my son last night, church meeting tonight and band practice tomorrow night. I just want to stay home and do stuff there. When you’re young you don’t care. You can go, go, go and enjoy every trip. But, as I grow older I just want to be home. It’s not like I have a lot to do, that’s not the point. I just like being there. I can water my plants; work on music (play or record); write stuff for this site or the church’s site or just watch TV. It doesn’t matter really as long as I’m at home doing it.

I’m convinced it’s just part of growing older. You begin to treasure the routine and the steadiness of life rather than the excitement of something new. You can sit at home with the wife and say nothing much at all and still enjoy it more than speaking to 20 or 30 people at church or some other gathering. It may have to do with raising 4 kids when we were younger. There was so much to do and so much noise all the time that having an empty house and no noise at all is a nice change. Also, I don’t have to worry about what I’m wearing (which is really important for a guy because we treasure function over style).

It may also have to do with the fact that I’ve come to enjoy yard work. I never liked it much in the past but I do now. I like the creativity of it and the pace of it. You can’t make a plant grow any faster than it naturally does and any change you make may take days, weeks or even months to have effect. There’s something about that that makes you slow down and pace yourself. That’s really good for me because I always feel like I’m in a hurry to do something or be somewhere, which can get tiring.

As I write this it’s caused me to think about what it is I actually do every night and whether it’s important enough to treasure it. There’s the yard work, which I think is therapeutic for me to slow myself down and because it gives me another creative outlet; there’s the music I write and record and I think that’s important because it brings joy to others (I hope, since it really is work); there’s this writing stuff, which I do simply because I like it; there’s TV which is mostly a waste of time, but can be educational at times; there’s my wife whom I love to be with, and I don’t have any problem with that. So, I think my time at home is worth it and valuable not only to me but to others as well.

Okay, I’m fine with it then. If you can think of any problem with it let me know and I’ll consider it, although I think you probably feel the same way, right?