I'm at day 363 before I retire. I won't lie. I'm a little worried about the change. I've worked for 44 years. And before that there was all that schooling. That kept me hopping for a few years. What do I miss about not working? The last time I really wasn't doing much with my days I was five years old. One thing I remember about those days was that the days were really long and shapeless. They were like summer days. Well, they were actually summer days, since I lived in Mexico 9 months of the year. My mother (I had a father of course, but, though sweet, was not equipped with much more skill with children than keeping me alive and preventing me from falling into a well) was a writer and a bit of a bohemian, I believe is her generation's term for hippy, so she never knew where I was, and didn't insist on bedtimes.
I'm rather hoping that days will become long and shapeless again; that this much vaunted idea among my contemporaries that time speeds up as we get older is just because of the way we are always rushing to get places on time. What did I do with the endless hours as a five year old? I spent most of my time outside moving instinctively, the way a dog does. Here some time lying looking at the tops of trees, there some time climbing trees, or in Mexico, walls. When I was hungry I would hang about looking gaunt till my mother noticed me and assembled a sandwich and some Koolaid. I never once thought, "Oh, God, it's nearly three, I'd better..." Then when I was tired and it was too dark to play outside, I came home and went to bed. (When I became a mother, I was surprised to learn from other mothers that their children went to bed at 8 every night, and even more surprised when my son began at about the age of 5 to ask if he couldn't PLEASE go to bed now, promptly at 8)
I notice now that weekend days are, in fact, much longer than work days. I get up early every day, but on the weekend days I can hang about in a bathrobe reading the paper, which is an excellent start, but then I begin to worry about time. I'm constantly aware of the clock in the kitchen and wondering what it's doing, and if it says 3 o'clock I'm dismayed because the day's more than half gone. We went away for a year in 2000 and did nothing much,( only we did it in Europe and Mexico, which is quite interesting), and I took off my watch that year and never put it back on. I still don't wear it, even at work. (Mind you, I work as a Principal, so there's brain-scraping buzzer every 70 minutes all day long, so it's hard to get away with pretending you're above watches).
So, in conclusion, as my students invariably say, in spite of my exhortations not to, one difference between me as a 5 year old and me now is 60 years of clock watching. I check the time when I wake up in the middle of the night, I check the time when I get up, I rush to be at work on time, though lately I've been very daring and started not caring what time I arrive, within a margin of 15 minutes, and I go to bed at 10 every night no matter what, because I'm worried about being tired at work and getting out of my routine. It would appear that I'll have to put tea-cosies over all the clocks if I want my retirement to be anything like my childhood.
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