What do you do when you’re not writing? How do you reset and return to the dashboard, refreshed? What do you need in your day-to-day life to maintain balance: Running? Yoga? Gardening? Painting? Cooking? Today, tell us.

A lot of pastimes were interrupted by health problems (approximately 2012-2015) and periodic flooding that caused a lot of upheaval (emptying the basement library/bedroom for a number of spring flood and rain incidents). Adding to that were the stresses of deaths in the family (2013-2017) and both my husband and I retiring in 2012.

Music

I started taking piano lessons at age six, when I was in second grade, and I’ve continued playing throughout the decades. I resumed playing the piano, last year. Basically exercises and beginning pieces, as I rebuild the muscles in my wrists, hands, and arms. I enjoy the movement involved in piano playing. A couple years ago, I gave away my cornet and trumpet, but I still occasionally play my soprano recorder and my harmonica.

Exercise

I use the elliptical machine in the front room when the weather isn’t suitable for the exercise bike that lives in the backyard gazebo, which is enclosed, but doesn’t have heat or air conditioning.  I try to spend at least fifteen minutes, one to three times a day, on one or the other. Recently, I have added my hand weights while I pedal (6.6 lb and 3.3 lb) to develop a better sense of balance (pedaling while not holding onto the handlebars). My goal is to continue rebuilding my arm and leg muscles. To help me get back into other activities I’m used to doing and beginning to pick up, again.

Carpenter’s Helper

My husband has started building his woodworking shop in our back yard, and I’ve helped in many ways with measuring, raising walls, carrying delivered materials from place to place, and getting on the ladder to hold the siding for measuring and nailing it into place. I’m beginning to feel more comfortable at the top end of the ladder (9-ft. ceiling). It’s a lot of fun. I haven’t really built anything since my mother and I made furniture for my first apartment. The woodworking shop will have room in the back (separate room with lock) for other hobbies, so as to free up basement space.

Gardening

I haven’t been growing herbs or culinary plants for several years, now, as my initial garden plot was displaced to make room for the concrete slab on which the woodworking shop now sits. The previous summer (2015?) we had work done to raise the ground around the house, addressing the problems with drainage and water seepage. Also, we put in an egress door. I have fencing to install around the new, 50-ft. garden at the bottom of the back yard, next time I’m not hauling around or bracing siding. Also, I’ve been fermenting spent coffee grounds to put in as a base when I dig up the silt around the house in sections to mix it with the peat moss. Also, I will be dividing the tulip, daffodil, and iris bulbs/tubers so they’re properly spaced.

Photography/Photo Art

The garden was the basis for my formal photography/photo art business from 2004 to 2009; I continued to sell through RedBubble until I collected my last commission check in the spring of 2015. Every morning, when the puppies and I go outside, I take a camera with me. I love taking photographs of the animals and insects, berries on the shrubs, leaves in the grass…I could spend whole days doing that. When my husband and I were going out with our ham radio club for Skywarn storm spotting with the National Weather Service’s weather spotter activities, I would take a camera and photograph interesting cloud formations, trees in motion, and such. I still do that to a limited extent here in town, but Skywarn duty was really fun. I still have my ham radio license and check into the local net every once in a while.

Student

Current serious reading includes Fukuyama’s Political Order and Political Decay, which I had to buy after I read the first volume: The Origins of Political Order. I am rereading some of my favorites from high school and college; the most recent is Buber’s I and Thou (intro. by Walter Kaufmann.) (My mother turned me on to Buber, Barth, Boltmann, Bonhoeffer et al., and my dad handed off a lot of history books and contemporary literature). I am also working my way through Grief and Bereavement in Contemporary Society: Bridging Research and Practice. I got interested in bereavement, grief, and counseling while meeting with the grief counselor from Hospice after my parents died. I am fascinated by the concept of non-finite grief and finding the topic addressed in other books that my counselor recommended. I started college in math and the hard sciences, but made the move into the humanities the summer before my junior year. Completed an English major (literature and composition), and then picked up a major in philosophy. I have enrolled in a workshop that will be coming up pretty soon: Introduction to Japanese Poetry. I started writing haiku in 1965 or ’66, and I am looking forward to digging deeper into it. I’ve been reading The Haiku Handbook, this summer, but have on hand to read next a book on Haiku and one on Tanka that were written by the person who’s doing the online workshop.

Reader

Currently I am rereading L.E. Modesitt’s Imager Portfolio while waiting for the next book in the series to come out. I also favor Anne Bishop’s The Others series, anything by Julie Czerneda, Doranna Durgin, and William Sanders, as well as Sharon Shinn, Laura Anne Gilman, and a couple dozen other authors who write science fiction, fantasy, cozy mysteries, “sweet” and traditional Regency romances, and having inherited the family’s Great Books of the Western World set upon our parents’ deaths, including the ten study guides and the inclusive Great Ideas Today yearbooks, I am rereading old favorites and thinking about tackling another guided study. (My mother took a speed reading course at a local college while I was in junior high school, and then sat me down to do all of the exercises; she also took me to the lab, where I practiced the techniques on the speed-reading equipment with a timer. Supposedly, it increases comprehension and retention.)

Target Pistol Shooting

Before I started having respiratory problems, I was involved in target pistol shooting, including practices for Bullseye competition (with my husband). The other objective of my exercising is to be able to shoot to that level again. Also, with the diabetes, my eyesight has changed. Now that the blood glucose levels are down, I am hoping that my next pair of eyeglasses will allow me to shoot at 50 ft. again. In the meanwhile, I have work on reloading for my favorite guns, because the price of factory ammunition is too high to be affordable. I am building up a good stock, because I will need a lot for proper practicing.

Cooking and Nutrition

With both diabetes and gluten sensitivity/celiac disease in the family, I spend much enjoyable time cooking for myself, coming up with new and different ways to cook the foods that I select, and collecting good cookware (when it goes on sale, preferably). I spent some time each day reading the community forums on the American Diabetes Association website. It is fascinating, coordinating food, sleep, exercise, and minimal medication to reach and maintain health weight and diet and deal effectively with any problems that arise.

I enjoy playing with the dogs, taking part in activities as I am able, doing chores, and having enjoyable discussions and daily conversation with my husband. An added pastime, this year: I am enjoying the New York Times daily crossword puzzles online. And I do write a lot of poetry along the way. I enjoy the variety in my life and the balance between acquisition, quiet for assimilation, and creative action.