Home alone...joyfully!

I have been home alone for over a year now thanks to a combination of my non-transferable job, the spouse's transferable job, and an empty nest...so here are some thoughts on what the ride's been like!

Cooking what I want...or better still, not cooking at all! Yeah, I dislike cooking...given a choice would not enter the kitchen at all. But being responsible for a family for nearly 28 years means one does what one has to🙄! I remember mentally ticking off items on my to do list as I used to lie awake waiting for sleep - school uniforms washed and ironed, snack box for short break, lunch for long break, chapati dough plus veg for 3 lunch boxes, dosa batter/coconut chutney for breakfast, pants/shirts of the spouse washed and ironed, LIC premium paid (oh darn, 😢where did I put the receipt?), electricity/water bill paid, and oh, was the water motor switched on - is there enough water in the overhead tank...what if there's a power failure in the morning and the tank goes dry?...A never ending list, mind-numbing detail, and a brain-dead, thankless grind. Because who remembers the invisible genie that keeps fulfilling wishes before they are expressed? Oh, come on, you are a genie, shut up and disappear into your bottle/lamp!!! Sound familiar? That sums up a large part of the last 28 years! Wait! I forgot school projects🥺...but let's move on.

So the idea of not having to cook if I did not want to was bliss - sandwiches for breakfast, lunch and dinner on days when I swore that I would not light the stove,🤪. The emphasis here is on having a CHOICE! I can hear the naysayers turning up their nose and saying one always has a choice - yes, a choice between a rock and a hard place - which is really no choice at all.

Cutting the clutter. My idea of Utopia is a house devoid of clutter, of a minimalist lifestyle. Of things in their rightful place, of not having to wade through endless clutter to lay my hands on what I want, of neatness, of tidiness. And I finally have things my way - no sorting through random objects like keys, wallets, hand kerchiefs, paper towels, cell phones, chargers, books, news papers, magazines, bills (most of them unwanted), etc., dumped haphazardly on the dining table to find what I want or to make space for, yes, you guessed it, food. Over the years, I developed a habit of shoving everything out of sight - the result was royal battles when the owners of these random objects could not find their stuff😜! But not any longer... not being a fan of the so-called lived-in look, I don't have to waste breath trying to explain that clutter bogs me down, puts me on edge.

So what am I doing with my new-found time? I have gone back to reading, which I had almost given up. I have gone back to just lying back and watching an oldie on TV, triggering happy trips down memory lane! I have taken a nap on weekends without bothering about the next meal. I have reconnected with friends albeit on WhatsApp, I have got on long calls with girl-friends bitching about this, that, and the other! I have watched movies alone -  Bollywood blockbusters that my family typically detests - and then window-shopped at the mall or browsed in Landmark instead of making a beeline for the food court as is usual. All this without worrying about whether the vegetables have been bought or whether I have the necessary ingredients for the next day's menu or if the clothes/uniforms have been picked up from the iron shop or if the domestic help will play hooky!

And what am I not doing? I am not falling in with other's plans for an outing; in fact, I don't go out if I don't feel like it!!! There have been occasions when I have entered home on Friday evening and hung around the entire weekend doing NOTHING (oh, blasphemy😲), and only stepped out of the house to go to work on Monday morning! I am not lingering in the supermarket or browsing in the mall and buying unwanted stuff. And many more!

And let me tell you, the solo ride's been an absolute joy! Me time at its best! The little pleasures that one does not even know are missing! A mind free of the clutter that comes with domestic drudgery and the daily routine of keeping other people's lives running smoothly, giving me solitude, the time to introspect, to do my own thing without interruptions, to just BE!!