I am writing this on my shiny new lap top, bought with money from my shiny new voluntary redundancy. It is Day Two of my absence from my much-loved job, although I should clarify that it wasn’t the WORK that I loved, but the people I worked with. I think of them fondly as ‘a bunch of mixed nuts’. They made our office environment a fun, sociable and wonderful place to work. I loved it so much I stayed for seven years, which is strange for me, as I usually get itchy feet much earlier than that.

But my lovely workmates are not the topic on conversation here – today’s article is bought to you by Rainy Days.

Many years ago, a friend of mine – observing my inability to cut myself much slack in a whole range of areas – dryly commented that my entire problem was that I was saddled with “Catholic guilt and a Protestant Work Ethic”. I was going to tell him to sod off, but it struck a chord with me and I have been musing over this a lot lately.

I have spent my whole life working and scrimping and sacrificing and saving – no different to many of us; I don’t count myself unusual in that regard. The whole problem, however, is that there NEVER seemed to be any pay-off. The entire point of delayed gratification is the ‘gratification’ part...it has to arrive at some point or all you are left with is the ‘delayed’ bit.

Everyone should “work hard and be nice to your mother – if you can’t, be nice to someone else’s mother; stop doing that to your brother; take that out of your mouth; put that down, you don’t know where it’s been; and save for a rainy day”. They all seem like reasonable ideas... unless you never get the pay-off and appear to be perpetually stuck in ‘delayed’ queue.

So, when the Golden Egg was offered, I decided that THIS IS MY RAINY DAY. I am finally going to give myself permission to have the pay-off. I can sleep when my body will allow me to, without having to drag myself into the office, half-dead with insomnia and replacing all the blood in my veins with caffeine just to keep moving. I can read the 36 new books I have in a beautiful box next to my bed. I can watch the TV series on DVD I have been yearning for. I can get my car serviced, pay my bills, go away for weekends, buy myself bunches of flowers and buy friends gifts for no reason.

The most exciting thing about my Rainy Day finally arriving is that I am finally going to fulfil a long-held dream... I am going to travel. I have been desperately wanting to travel overseas since I was 16 years old. I am now at the pointy end of my 30s. You do the math – it’s been a long time coming.

While it is wonderful to stop, breathe and relax, it is also a struggle. I keep seeing things that need doing – not necessarily by me, mind you – and thinking I should do them. I should volunteer to walk dogs at the RSPCA; I should visit nursing home residents who don’t have any family; I should volunteer on the phones at World Vision or Oxfam, etc. It is not only that I am not used to being inactive, it is that I am almost unable to allow myself to do absolutely nothing. And that is rather scary.

We are all so programmed to go, do, be, achieve, act, contribute, stand, be counted, not take it laying down, embrace life, climb the ladder and stand on the pinnacle.....but when do we allow ourselves to breathe, stop racing, travel across a continent by slow train, get someone to drive us so we can look out the window, languidly rest in the delicious pages of an actual book. When do we actually start to live the one shot we get at life as though it is not a giant obstacle course?

I decided to get off the not-so-merry-go-round because I looked at my exhausted, strained and unhealthy self and thought “If this is me at almost 40, I am NOT going to make it to 50”.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no serious health issues or impairments (although I am fairly sure that being half Irish and half Scottish makes me eligible for one of those blue disabled parking stickers) – it is just that I have strived/striven, worked, sacrificed and pushed myself way too hard for way too long.

I am now an adult with money in the bank, not a lot of living expense, a teeny tiny clown car that is completely paid off and absolutely no debt except for my teeny tiny cottage. I have no credit cards, no personal debt and an abject revulsion of unnecessary debt. Don’t write in – I know some debt is good debt; it is income-producing, equity-building, etc. What I am talking about is the soul-crushing debt – the one you have to pay for all the stuff you want but don’t really need; the stuff that makes your life bearable or pleasurable while you are doing the delayed gratification thing.

I have already crushed myself under that kind of debt and dug myself out with something akin to a ‘fire sale’ of my life.

It was incredibly tough to make the call, to pay the money and to stop the ride but I am SOOO much happier. I don’t own a TV, a DVD or a desktop computer. This is my very first laptop, which is almost silly for a writer, but there you have it. I am tech-savvy; I haven’t been scrawling my articles on Butcher’s Paper with crayons or anything, but I never needed whatever the newest gadget was and rarely saw the point in having it just because it was the zeitgeist.

So I am really hoping that 2011 brings me gifts I haven’t had for a long time: peace of mind; calm; contentedness; tranquillity; an ability to laugh with something other than a crazed cackle; intimate views of many other countries, from the inside; a new hand to hold in mine; a quiet voice to speak love and joy to me; a pace that I can live at, instead of always aiming for but just missing.

For all of us; for those who had a wonderful 2010 and those who didn’t; may we all achieve one thing in particular in 2011..... may we exchange our Hamster Wheels, our Not-So-Merry-Go-Rounds and our Obstacle Courses for something better – an adventure playground with optional giant Ball Pit.

Love and peace to all for the holiday season.

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