It is all a question of weeding out what you yourself like best to do, so that you can live most agreeably in a world full of an increasing number of disagreeable surprises.
MFK Fisher
As a recipe for happiness, this has a lot going for it. Sounds simple! Just stop doing those things that don’t give you pleasure and add things that do. Now that I’m retired I feel the future is a clean slate to do that very thing.
The main question people ask me is, “What will you do now?”, which always puts me on the defensive. It’s like I have to prove that I’ve made the right decision, with a firm plan all worked out.. Maybe it makes me feel uncomfortable because I have no great plan. Maybe I’ll volunteer somewhere, or get a job at a yarn store. Who knows? I know it’ll be challenging at first, because nobody else will be making my schedule. However, I hope to get the knack of it after awhile. I just don’t want the days to pass and I find that I’ve not accomplished much that satisfies me. I don’t want to be busy just for the sake of filling my days, I want to work on meaningful (at least to me) projects.
But what gives something meaning? What will fill my days in a satisfactory way? I don’t want to simply watch the days tick by–although, let’s face it, that’s what’s happening. If I start thinking too much about that, I’m sure to get depressed. (My mother and father each died at age 84, so in the back of my mind, I only have 24 years left; it doesn’t sound like much.)
Writing gives me a lot of satisfaction. Figuring out how to express what I feel or think about something is a challenge I enjoy working through, and I plan to do more of it. I’ll also continue to knit, which is relaxing, challenging and interesting by turns. People who don’t practice a craft like knitting have no idea how much goes into it, how many skills it can entail and how intricate some of the patterns can be. Another challenge would be to actually start knitting using my own patterns, or no pattern at all. Flying without a net isn’t my MO but I plan to do more of it. There’s also the knitting machine sitting in my spare room. So much to learn about that!
Gardening is also a great relaxer and nurturer, so I’ll continue to do that in my hit-or-miss way. I’m pretty inconsistent with it, but the garden is very forgiving…
Hanging out with friends and relatives is big on my list of things to do during retirement. We hope to spend a lot of time with our grandson, Iggy and his lovely parents. We hope to visit the country to get our nature fix and generally enjoy the company of people we care about. I’m really looking forward to being able to do more of that, especially as Covid restrictions start to ease.
One aspect of having a lot of time on my hands that worries me is my addiction to the internet and my devices. It’s so easy to reach for one or the other of them, often just to fill in gaps in the day, but then those gaps get wider… The draw is undeniable. I have to figure out how to avoid the rabbit hole in order to accomplish things I really want to do but which take a lot more effort than just scrolling on my phone. Even as I write this I’m tempted to check whether anybody has made a move in any of my Scrabble games…. I can finish this tomorrow, right?
The adage, “never put off until tomorrow what can be done today” is one that I plan to repeat to myself often. I’m not a high energy person, perhaps because of my chronic difficulty with sleep, so I have to push myself to do things, including exercise. It’s all going to be a challenge, but I hope it will be an exciting and satisfying one.
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