Today's post has nothing to do with the deep dive inwards that I have been doing this week, except to the degree that it is a result of a certain amount of looking back.
These days, I am generally asleep by 9 or 9:30 PM. I will only go out in the evening to something that is a "hell yes" (usually a musical event). I was wondering if this is me becoming an old fuddy-duddy. But the fact is that, essentially, I've always been "early to bed, early to rise" in a boring kind of way, by most people's standards. Whether it was at Smith, or when I lived in DC, or my decade in New York City, my idea of a night out on the town was to take part in a choir rehearsal, or take an art or yoga class, or eat dinner out with a friend or go to an early movie. I mean, I never, ever, went to bars, or discos, or night clubs, or swank restaurants. I attended a rather formal dance at The Plaza once, but it was with relatives, not a date. The year I studied in England, I'd go with friends to a pub once or twice a week and have a cider or a glass of wine, but my memory is that last call was 10 or 10:30 pm. In places like Duluth and Helena, night life was usually me reading or watching TV for an hour after supper and going to sleep.
Now, even today, if the opportunity presented itself to dress up and go out to dinner at an awesome restaurant and have a really top-notch gin and tonic, I would -- and I would do anything in my power to stay awake past nine! But that hasn't been my life most of the time, and clearly if that kind of entertainment had been a priority for me, I would have lived a very different life.
Last night, I chose not to attend something that wasn't quite in my wheelhouse, so I stayed at the house and read an old Ellis Peters Brother Cadfael mystery. Yup. England, monasticism, medieval life, and the option of throwing a bookmark onto any page and take it up again tomorrow. When you are a contemplative nun at heart, that is "night life". That is your "wheelhouse". In the old days, I subtly judged myself for being so dull. What is lovely now is my ability to fully accept and love myself exactly as I am...
