Well, I have to admit, that frank question, caught me off guard - but only for a moment.
"Not at all," I exclaimed! "In fact, I'm busier than ever and I forget to plan time to get from one activity to the other - so I'm always running late! But the bottom line is that I absolutely LOVE being able to set my own schedule."
To be honest, I've thought about getting a "retirement job" like lots of folks do, but then I would have to show up when some employer told me to and stay until they let me leave. Add to that, it would likely be some kind of retail job, which means at any time I could hear the dreaded, "Miriam, clean up in aisle 4!"
"Really?, "Bill questioned. "What do you DO all day long to keep yourself so busy?"
Again, I paused. Honestly some days (just like when I was working) it seems like the day flies by and I do very little of consequence. Other days, I do so many things I lose track of them all!
"Well," I continued, "I go to the gym nearly every day, I'm riding my bicycle a lot, tending my garden, meeting friends for lunch, spending time with my 88-year-old mother and doing shopping and sewing projects for her as well. I've done a little consulting, I volunteer at the Hands of God and help out at church when I can, like assisting with the church directory. And of course I said goodbye to my cleaning lady so I try to keep the house in decent shape as well. Maybe that all sounds kind of sad, but I'm loving it!"
"Oh no," Bill said, "that's what retirement is supposed to be about!"
After our meeting, I started to think about why it is so enticing to be able to set one's own schedule.
It may seem obvious, but the more I thought about the stages of life, it occurred to me that someone else has been setting my schedule since before my memory begins.
Sure, when we are small children, we have plenty of time to be irresponsible and playing is our work. During that time, though, our parents are responsible for setting our core schedule. Before long, we enter school and have to adhere to their schedule, which gets more time-consuming as we go through the grades, what with homework and extra-curricular activities.
It's true that for most of those school years the summer provides quite a bit of unstructured time, but when we get old enough to work, that goes away as well.
After K - 12, we either go off to college or get a job, and of course that entails adhering to someone else's schedule. Granted, those single years of ONLY having a job with no major financial or family obligations are a piece of cake to what typically comes next, still we have only weekends and vacations to choose our daily activities.
Marriage, parenthood, extended family and more dictate how we spend our time for many more years and then Lord willing the children grow up and become independent and we start to have more time to ourselves, but we still have a work schedule.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about any of this! I wouldn't trade my life, filled with family, friends, church, work and play for anything! The people, places, career, sorrows and joys of all those years have culminated into the individual I am today.
But when I was lucky enough to get to retire from my day job, I became pretty protective of my time and the ability to set my own schedule!
Now if you think this may be daunting after being so "scheduled up" for 50+ years, you are not too far off the mark. Check out my first blog post to get inside my head on that topic.
It's possible that a few months or years from now, I'll be looking for more in my life that will tie me to someone else's schedule.
But for now, after not quite two years of retirement bliss, I'm still enjoying setting my own pace.
Set a pace - not a race,
Miriam
No comments:
Post a Comment