I am not a dissatisfied person. I may be - according to the day - sad, angry, moribund, off-kilter, offside, bleh, grumpy, irritable, lonely, fretful, clumsy, indecisive, too decisive, or all of the above. But what I am not is dissatisfied.

It is by no means a perfect life, but it's the life I chose. Sickness notwithstanding, mine is almost a curated life. You wouldn't know it from my housekeeping, but I'm very attached to order. A reasonable schedule is not something I arrive at easily, but once achieved, I will stick to it like… something that is very sticky.

All this sounds very regimented. And I suppose there is a way I could make it so, but in my world this is just what passes for getting through the day. The most important thing is: I decide. That's it. No mystery or magic. Just one decision after another until there is a sorted-through day for me to manage.

If this does not sound very different from your life, that's no surprise. Many of us do some form of this. One decision, one action, one step after another. But most people have guidelines of a sort. They have jobs for which they must arrive at a certain time, at a certain place. School is a more extreme version. No matter how genteel their presentation, schools are designed to conquer hooliganism.

Someone on high has decreed that the hours of 7-9 am create the best window for arrival. Someone decided to put our children into our care three times a year for weeks or months on end for a thing called 'vacation.'

You did not ask for these things, they were inflicted on you.

My life has few imposed rules or frameworks. That means I have to make them. It's not even remotely carefree and breezy. But I can't complain. Because I chose this. I chose not to work in an office or at a supermarket. I chose to work from home. I chose not to live in the realm of someone else's shape of the world.

Choice is an extraordinary gift. It is not one we necessarily get the opportunity to use every day. Some people almost never get to try it on. Some people have it taken away from them. And if you do have it, it does not always feel like a boon. It feels like responsibility and hard work. But then, so is owning your own island or a stable of polo ponies.

Feel free to swap horses and isolated land for whatever you think of as luxurious. Let the thought of really having what you want sink in.

This is what choice is. Simple, everyday, workaday world choices. It is an unparalleled luxury. Far too many people cannot choose or are not allowed to choose.

It may please us to think of this as the way of totalitarian states. Of places we read about and think - ack - there go those political/religious/philosophical zealots again.

But let yourself think just a little deeper than that. What are the things we accept without question? What are the things against which we rail and cuss but do not seek explanation or justification? What are the things, who are the people we let go of and don't ask why we couldn't keep them?

That's an all-of-us level. There are more pers