It’s been a few days now that I have not
blogged…interesting…that is how Catholics start their confessions, ‘It has been
two years since my last confession’…or in my case, 20 years. I’ll tell you straight up; my greatest sin is
worry. Why else would I have a blog, but
to worry out loud, yet in complete obscurity?
So, In the last week I have been on vacation, learning again how to move
within time, pushing out its borders to suit my activities and mood,
constricting it only when I have to, like when I needed to get the
grandchildren home because I had to come back, make dinner and get to my band
practice. All of this rather than being
driven by time, or being its servant as I am during my working year.
This reflection on time is important in this blog about my
impending retirement, because my relationship to time will be different; I
won’t continuously have to be places at certain times. And to be honest, I’m not minding my vacation
right now. I don’t stay in my pyjamas
all day, and I feel one or two tasks are enough to tackle. For example, making breakfast and then moving
my deck chair in or out of the sun, as the mood strikes. Or cycle with the children to the local
university farm, lie around (with intermittent cries of ‘stop throughing clumps
of dirt!” and then cycling home. Perhaps
it is a model for the days of my retirement?
But of course, it is a vacation, which by its nature gets its pleasures
through its contrast to work, and here in the northern clime where I live, it
is summer; the days are long. And then
there is the question of purposefulness.
Pressed though I am by time like icing through a nozzle during the
working year, my life at work is purposeful; and it is a type of purposefulness
that I like. I feel that I am important
in the little realm in which I operate, and that what I do is important.
When I imagine retirement, I think on the one hand of the
type of life I am living while I’m on vacation, and on the other hand I think
of the short winter days, and the potential purposelessness of what I do with
the time encompassed in those days. In
other words, a vacation is pleasurable by virtue of its contrast from work, but
what will retirement contrast?
At first when I told people I would be retiring in a year
people expressed happiness for me.
“You’ll love it!” “ You’ll be busier than you can ever imagine!”
“Someone like you will never be bored!”
Now, I’m hearing a different chorus.
The 95 year old lady downstairs said to me, “Oh. Well.
You’ll need to keep busy. You’d
better get out and volunteer. If you
don’t keep busy and find things to do you won’t live long.” Ominously she’s been busy for as long as I’ve
known her with a series of grim-seeming health problems. And a chum on my band, who is an architect
and therefore effectively self-employed, said, “Hmm. You’re going through with it then? You know, for every year you work past
so-called retirement age, you extend your dementia free years by a factor
of…oh, I don’t know…five.” And then she
looked at me with a slightly smug expression that said, ‘you won’t catch me
retiring!’
And finally I read my friend Max’s blog. He retired two years ago and has been in
Rwanda with CUSO, with the avowed goal of one day running the whole Africa
branch. Examples like his keep me awake
at night wracked with guilt. I want to
write books and maybe do a little contract work as a Principal mentor. In other
words two highly risky enterprises in terms of whether anyone will want either
one of these products of my retirement activity. Whereas if I were to volunteer my time, I
would be as purposeful as all get out, and people would have to accept me and
bear it no matter what a pain in the ass I might turn out to be.
Oh…it’s breakfast time.
I have to get dressed and do one of my activities. I will mull over what the second activity
will be over my poached egg.
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