no time to write???

Having just turned 55 and am feeling oldish and tired and weary of the same old routines and am looking for a way to turn those routines into a more productive and creative life.
My days are spent cooking, serving, cleaning, selling art, gardening, doing paperwork and more paperwork. I start at 7;30 am and we are often not out of the cafe until 9 pm or later. I enjoy our business and I enjoy the people we meet and I love being in an environment filled with art and music and good food but my personal life is getting short shrift and most nights I'm too tired to even eat a proper supper.

My writing also is stalled since most of my mental and creative energy goes into our cafe and inn. So I am all set to whine about how I just can't find the time to work on my creative projects...
BUT...says the little honest voice in my head...you seem to have enough time to sit about in the evening drinking half a bottle of white wine before you go home to bed.
The little honest voice is right and furthermore, although half a bottle of white wine, sloshed down in a hurry on a mostly empty stomache does wonders to relieve the day's stress , it means I wake up at two a.m with an incipient mild hangover and insomnia.
Oh this is SOOOOO unfair. I like drinking half a bottle of white wine and feel resentful that a mere two and half glasses of a delicious riesling or chardonnay is enough to make me feel less than one hundred per cent in the morning. And then of course, there are the evenings where one has two-thirds of a bottle of white wine because we are having entertainment and one needs to stay lively and it's easier to have a glass of wine than to go to the kitchen and make myself a soya lecethin and banana milkshake which would be much better for my nutritional well-being.

And I know that even small amounts of alcohol are not good for post-menopausal women and that I don't need the extra calories and most of all, drinking wine becomes a substitute for other creative activity. A couple of years after we started our cafe business, I decided to quit drinking entirely and did so for almost three years. The first few weeks were slightly difficult, mostly because I had to find other things to do with my time. I promised myself a new Mac laptop and Internet access and that took care of the time issue. Within a month, once I'd gotten into a new evening groove, I didn't care if I ever had another drink or not...

This time, my rewards and diversions will have to be different. As one gets older, it seems that there's a negative sort of reward system in place....one is happy just to feel healthy and energetic and focused instead of searching for the zapped up bliss that held so much promise just a few years ago. So the absence of pain and the accomplishment of a growing pile of pages should be enough to keep me on the straight and narrow path of tea and tap water. So here is my "vision statement".

Distilled into its essence, I feel that I spend too much of my precious free time drinking wine and not enough time writing and if I spend an hour every evening writing instead of drinking wine, I will have: @about 700 pages of something...maybe not very good stuff, but at least something written after one year. b) saved myself approx 1500.00 dollars (based on 5.00 per half bottle per night times 365 days a year c) saved myself about 300 calories a day which means I'll lose some weight effortlessly d) enhanced my health and saved myself the occassional morning headache and middle of the night insomnia.

So day one of the new disciplined regiment comes to a close. Cleaned the entire upstairs of our summer house this afternoon and this evening, after a yummy supper of pork chops, brocolli and rosemary mashed potatoes (with no wine with dinner) came back here and sorted out a large box of family photos and then organized this blog. Productivity level: good. Nutritional efforts; very good. (also had toasted western on whole grain for breakfast and a herbed egg salad on brown for lunch... too many carbs???...too many eggs?? I can get really neurotic about food.
Spring peepers are making their froggy noises down by the creek at Heritage Park and my spinach plants have sprouted in the greenhouse. All in all, a very pleasant sunny day and feel justifiably tired.