BLOGG # INNER RESOURCES

 I was talking to my friend the other day about my  decision to live quietly for a time  and with tongue in cheek quoted my favourite author Jane Austin, describing  my ability to cope with solitude without difficulty because I appear to have many "inner resources. " As soon as I said this I got an "inner jolt" in my solar plexus. This quote is from one of my favourite least admired characters from "Emma"-in my estimate Jane's best novel. The character, Mrs. Elton, is  the vulgar ambitious social climber and new wife of John Elton the local young vicar.  She very arrogantly and at great length, talks to long suffering Emma about not fearing retirement now that she was married and living "village life." "Blessed with so many resources within myself, the world was not necessary to me." she states.  I loved the passage where she describes Mr. Elton's  proposal. She insists of  Mr.''E" er "Caro sposo" that there must be music available in their future life for her happiness-one of her "inner resources"
I felt great chagrin as I thought of Mrs. E's and my own inner resources and decided to see if mine measured up.
Well of course there is Music, there are also Books, Culture and Art to begin with and I decided to examine how I spent my day doing all this. First of all music-I have been trying to perfect Beethoven's "Fur Elise" on my piano for the past six years. I decided to read the 'Russians' again and took out Dostoevsky's " The Brothers Karamazov' from the library and planned a program of sketching and painting the summer flowers on my balcony-one painting per day.
My "Fur Elise" is still not perfect -I always get stuck on the same spot.  My "Brother Karamazov" was due in one month-it became overdue and I was still on page 18. I have done exactly five paintings in the past month and the flowers are now past bloom.
It is obviously time to see what happened to my "Inner resources" and what I do with my time so I re-examined my day. It looked like this: I spent fifteen minutes on the piano, I spent half an hour in the morning and exactly five minutes at bedtime before nodding off while reading my book. My Art did not fare better - I could only tolerate thirty minutes or so in the hot sun -also my ability to deeply concentrate- as is required to paint well -lasted about ten minutes. So what did I do the rest of my day? 
I spent quite a long time flipping through the latest fashions in Vogue; lingered over coffee in my local coffee shop; talked on the phone; re-organized my wardrobe and tried on new outfits and watched Netflix on my T.V.  When I totted up the time spent the list looked like this: fifteen minutes piano,thirty two minutes reading,thirty minutes on the balcony-fifteen minutes sketching, one hour at coffee shop, one hour trying on my clothes, one hour on phone and the rest of the time watching Netflix!! You do the math I am too ashamed.
Obviously dear Jane Austin, who is now celebrating her two hundredth year anniversary of her birth with many accolades throughout the world, would not be impressed with my "Inner Resources."