Since I am now retired I spend my early mornings playing the words games in The New York Times while I sip on my tea and listen to the sounds of the neighborhood children waiting for the school bus. It’s a leisurely time that I rarely enjoyed during my working years when I had to dash out of the house at six in the morning to fight the Houston traffic on my way to work. Back then I would munch on my breakfast in the car and listen to morning news stations that kept me alerted to stalled cars and our ever quirky weather. 

These days my mornings are slow, quiet and uneventful which is the way I like things to be. I rise long before my husband and don’t bother to turn on lights. I open the blinds downstairs and let the rising of the sun illuminate my space while my wind chimes welcome me to the serenity of being able to pause for a moment from the hustle and bustle that I know is happening on those roads that I traveled for so many years and decades. 

I have earned the slow pace of things so I revel in my mornings even on the two days a week that I teach homeschooled children. I set our meetings at times after the morning rush so that I am still able to quietly enjoy my morning routines of checking that my brain is still working by successfully completing Spelling Bee, the Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Strands. 

Once my word puzzles are complete I head to Facebook to greet friends celebrating birthdays with my best wishes. I read the daily essay from Heather Cox Richardson, an historian who relates the political happenings of the present to the events of the past. Then I post my weekday blogs and search my messages and posts to see how my friends are doing. 

Sadly of late Facebook has become a total mess. I’m lucky if I see five or six posts from the hundreds of friends with whom I have supposedly connected. I know that many of them, especially the younger ones, have abandoned Facebook over time, but others tell me that they are still active even as I no longer see their posts. The tech guys who run the site have created algorithms that they believe satisfy my needs but often they link me with people who are mostly acquaintances rather than friends and never show me the posts of the people with whom I really hope to stay in touch. 

Wading through the junk on my wall is like checking the mail that comes to my home. If I have one item that is personal and important I am lucky. Everything else is a paper held commercial for some person or product that I don’t want or need. My recycle bin fills every single day with brochures that are wasted on me. 

I find myself spending less and less time on Facebook or expending the energy to check my mailbox for the same reasons. Most of the time all I find in either spot is tons of garbage that I never requested and never want to keep. The book of faces that was once a lovely avenue for staying in touch and finding long lost friends is now a hodgepodge of irritating posts from people and organizations about which I do not care. 

I suppose that I might follow the lead of my daughters and many of my former students who have closed their Facebook accounts but I still learn about events that my Class of 66 is planing and sometimes I find out about life events of people that I know and love. I get to see the weddings and births and vacations of my former students and enjoy the travelogs of my former colleagues. I post my blogs and get a reader or two although not nearly as many as I once had. 

I suppose that I now mostly write my weekday canons for myself because I just like to write. I have always found joy in stringing together words to express myself and now that I am retired I have the luxury of doing it every single day in much the way that I exercise my body. I suppose that if I am totally honest writing is a vanity project for me because I am quite certain that only a few faithful followers read my posts mostly because they are kind and know that it makes me happy when they do so. 

I often imagine some stranger stumbling onto one of blogs and deciding that a wider audience needs to read what I have to say, but such thoughts are really unlikely to unfold. Writing is just part of my morning routine. A conscious act that makes me feel good. Who knows? Maybe in the long years to come someone might accidentally encounter one of my blogs and enjoy it. I can’t think of a better reason to keep honing my hobby than to bring a bit of happiness or a moment of pensive thought to even one person. If my post on Facebook manages that then it is all worth continuing for a bit longer.