Judge Judy
In my head, I share my thoughts with a number of visitors. There’s my mom, my dad, my awareness, and my Judge Judy. They all visit my head at various times, whenever they want to, really. My mom reminds me to be kind and to be careful; my dad tells me jokes and reminds me to be resilient and powerful; my awareness feels like an awakening, a way to notice the world around me. Judge Judy, well, she just judges.
Judge Judy is there every day. I even judge her. On days when I feel less of Judge Judy, I think I’ve mastered the judginess, that I will no longer be judging myself (or I’ll be judging myself less). On days when I feel more of her, I gather up steam in her messages, and I judge myself more. I either commend her for her judging and throw even more shame into my head, or I feel ashamed that she is there and want her to go away.
Really, when Judge Judy shows up all I need to do is accept her. I can talk to her, thank her for her messages and ask her to move on. These days, she has become particularly loud mouthed. This week, it will be 3 years since I first retired. When I retired, I even wrote a blog post about it: “And then it happened.” In the post I talked about how I was going to listen to my heart, my awareness, and focus my efforts on “being” and less “doing.” For so many years of my life I had been a “doer,” moving from one industrious effort to the next. Sometimes I think I ended up doing things half-assed in that method. You can’t give your job AND your children 100%. So some days the job got 75% and the kids got 25%. Some days it was reversed. Some days they both got 65% and I felt like I had been squeezed through a pasta maker. What percentage did my marriage get? What percentage did I get?
Anyways, as I said I wanted to stop “doing” so much and I retired. I figured in retirement Judy would show up less often. I was a little fearful at first. Would I have enough to do? That first year was a blur. I went on multiple trips: a yoga retreat in Mexico, The Grand Canyon, visits to my son in Boulder, my daughter’s college graduation, trips to the beach in Florida, my sister’s birthday party, a wedding in San Diego, a wedding in Boulder, moving my daughter to Wisconsin, the Shakespeare Festival in Southern Utah, San Francisco, and the trip of a lifetime: 6 weeks in Bali.
That year when I wasn’t traveling, I was home doing other things. I went back to taking violin lessons after over 35 years of not touching my violin. I wrote more blogs. I took hikes, a total of 80 for the year. I practiced yoga. I found Buddhist Fellowship. I went to Meetups. I hosted parties. I started playing around at a monthly improv group. During the summer, I went to outdoor concerts almost weekly. All in all, I was busy doing. I was not doing at a job, but I was doing in other ways. I was keeping busy. One of my retired friends said to me, “Are you ever going to slow down? You’re retired!” An interesting thing that happened during that first year? Judge Judy stayed pretty quiet. Don’t get me wrong, she still had things to say such as, “You are going to run out of money if you keep living this way,” and “Be careful out there!’ But I noticed her less. I attributed that to not working anymore.
Once I started my second year of retirement, things were a little less glamorous. I started an 11 month yoga teacher training program. This program required me to be more home bound than usual. I still did the yoga trip to Mexico, my sister’s birthday, trips to visit my children, and even my first road trip in an RV with That One Guy (TOG), but I didn’t leave the continent and I was never gone for more than a week. I hiked some, I did a lot of yoga, wrote some more blog posts, and I picked up volunteering at a memory care hospice. I still went to Meetups, and I still held parties. I still did improv. I went to concerts. I bought a glass kiln so I could practice my glass making efforts at home. The excitement of retired life was slowing down. But wait! That third year was coming up! I was planning a 6-week trip to Asia in the spring and a 25-day European cruise in the fall. I was going to pick back up on the adventure! Judy came back and whispered in my ear, “Good job keeping down expenses this year. Be careful next year.”
Then shortly after my third year of retirement started, COVID hit. Suddenly I wasn’t going to Asia for 6 weeks. Suddenly I wasn’t going anywhere. When my trip got cancelled, I quickly got on the internet and looked for things I could do at home: A local yoga workshop, an art class for ice tie dying fingerless gloves, and a new meetup or two. But COVID shut those things down too. Now I was just home. Luckily my daughter came and stayed with me for those first 3 months of COVID. We kept each other company. Due to COVID, TOG was out of work for a while, and we were able to hang out more and make a cool fountain in my backyard (who am I kidding? TOG made the fountain and I shouted encouraging things as he worked).
Every day I set out to do a number of things. My typical day has a “todo list.” This list will probably include: meditation, practicing my violin, some form of exercise, writing, reading, and studying my latest interest. Some days include hikes and virtual Meetups as well. These lists have become a playground for Judge Judy. If I don’t do something on my list, she’s dancing around in my head, shaming me for not checking off all the boxes. But do I want my life to be a set of checked boxes? I remember when I retired thinking, “I’m not going to be that person who dies worrying if they spent enough time in the office.” So why am I so concerned about the “todo list?” Why can’t I just “be?”
The story I am telling myself these days is that COVID plays a big part in these Judge Judy games. The fact that I cannot do as much as I am used to leaves me spending a lot of time in my head. So Judge Judy comes out and judges my behavior a lot more. Am I doing any less of my todo lists because COVID is here? Well yes, sort of. I notice that I am using this opportunity to overwhelm myself. I look at my list and it seems insurmountable. It’s almost as if I’m afraid to get started because then I will fail. Then, when I don’t get started and nothing happens, Judge Judy is there ready to pounce. So now, I’m focusing on just starting. If I just pick up the violin and play a few scales, well then the violin has been played. If I just read 3 pages in a book, reading has been done. And if I just write a few sentences every day, a blog post has been written. Most importantly, I have discovered it’s ok to let the list go. My todo list, it’s an agreement between me and myself. No one else is hurt if the list is ignored. Unlike my job where I had a number of tasks to do for a business, these tasks only benefit me. So if I don’t get to them I know there will always be tomorrow. And there will always be the day after that. And the day after that. So just take a chill pill, Judy.
