Enjoy your ‘new normal’

We built our house in 1970. My husband designed the structure and it fits our lifestyle perfectly.
Thus we have enjoyed living here all these years.
However, even though we haven’t moved in more than 40 years, I still remember how traumatic it was to move a household. We had moved five times in the previous 16 years–three times halfway across the continent and twice a few blocks away.
Our most difficult move was from western Canada to the middle of the United States. I say difficult because our eight-year-old daughter did not want to move!
Usually a very pleasant and cheerful child, that summer she became whiney and clingy. How well I remember that, instead of playing with the other children during our frequent visits to Kinsmen Park, she would follow Rae and me around, pleading, “Do we really have to move?”
Obviously, I felt like a heel making her leave her wonderful, familiar world.
Once here, although she had lots of friends immediately, she frequently reminded her parents that they had “ruined” her life!
Then, one day around Christmas time, she announced, “Now you’ve really ruined my life! If I would go back to Edmonton, I would miss my friends here.”
I understand exactly how she felt. I feel the same way right now about my computer!
It all began about 10 months ago, when a power surge killed my computer. But instead of fixing the old computer, I decided it was time to buy a new one.
Bad mistake! What I didn’t know at the time is how terribly frustrating Windows 8 can be. It seemed to me that Windows 8 had “ruined” my working life!
Although I bought my first computer in the early 1980s and have bought several since, in all those 30 years I have never experienced such extreme frustration.
Finally, in desperation, I paid another $100 for Windows 7. A little less frustrating than 8, Windows 7 was no match to my comfortable XP.
As a result, I have limped along for all these months trying to find documents, missing my favourite computer games, and struggling to get used to a new operating system.
Always wishing I could go back to Windows XP–a system that Microsoft no longer supports.
But now I’m really frustrated because I’ve discovered that if I could go back to XP, I would miss some aspects of Windows 7. Like my daughter, I have found a “new normal.”
That often happens in life. Things change drastically–you lose a job, your best friend moves to another state, your living situation changes, or you buy a new computer.
Then, after a difficult period of adjustment, you find that you love retirement, you make new friends, you discover the advantages of your new home, and the “new normal” sets in.
Sometimes, the “new normal” turns out better than the “old normal.” But, other times, you have to say this is just the way life is and find the good in a bad situation.
Either way, your “new normal” is your life right now. And it’s up to you to enjoy it because life is too precious to waste!
Marie Snider is an award-winning health writer and syndicated columnist. Write her at thisside60@cox.net