It is early in my retirement, and I’m taking a walk with my friend, Ralph. He comments that he knows that I’ll be busy in my retirement as I have so many varied interests. I nod in agreement.
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When I was in the planning stages of my retirement, I made a deliberate effort to develop activities to fill my retirement time. Although these interests were diverse, they all had a unifying theme, they were all productive.
My work life was hectic, and when combined with my family life, there was very little time to do anything else. Additional tasks had to be carefully sandwiched into my daily schedule, and it wasn’t uncommon for me to live my life in 15-minute blocks of time. My schedulable time was so tight that I would frequently feel guilty when I was working on one project, as I thought that I should be doing something else. For instance, I might be paying the household bills while feeling guilty that I wasn’t weeding the garden. In retrospect, it was all pretty crazy.
With the onset of retirement, the amount of unscheduled time at my disposal became exponentially higher and offered me the ability to accomplish significant tasks. However, despite having massive amounts of available time, I have not written a blockbuster novel or discovered the cure for cancer.
I am accomplishing some of the items on my list, this blog is one of them. However, other planned tasks never made it to the initiation stage. Although I did ponder this inequity, it didn’t seem to bother me too much. Other activities were filling my time, which included doing a lot of social media work for my friend Tom’s business, and building my campervan. The latter being a fantasy project, turned into reality.
I also became aware of another internal phenomenon. That phenomenon consisted of a feeling that started subtly and continues to slowly build to this very day. It is hard for me to define this feeling, the closest tag that I can come up with is “peace.”
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It is early morning, and I am camping in Colorado. I’m finishing my breakfast of scrambled eggs, pork-n-beans, and coffee. I’m parked at a campsite in the Great Sand Dunes National Park. Anxious feelings are starting to build in me. I’m once again having the feeling that I should be doing something else. In this case, I should be dashing out the door to go on a hike. I looked around Violet, my campervan, and note her disarray. I start to rush as I wash my dishes and quickly and carelessly place them back into their bin. I forcibly stop myself and take a deep breath. Why am I in such a hurry? Where am I going that requires me to rush? Why am I feeling stressed? I mentally tell myself, “Mike, you are exactly where you should be at this moment. Plant your feet on the ground and stay in the present.”
Being an orderly person what I really want to do is to clean and reorganize Violet. I make a conscious effort to repack the cupboard in a more organized fashion. I then take out my area rugs and give them a good shake. I follow this by wiping down surfaces and using my whisk broom to sweep Violet’s tiny floor. Along each step, I remind myself to stay in the moment and to not drift into the danger zone of thinking that I should hurry as I need to be doing something else.
The entire cleaning process doesn’t take very long, but it still consumes about three times more time than the rush job that I was initially going to do. The slower pace allows me to leave for my hike feeling peaceful rather than frantic. Also, it is lovely knowing that I will return to a clean and tidy van after my hiking adventure.
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I am seeing this slow-down phenomenon occurring in other areas of my life. If I go grocery shopping, I don’t feel a need to finish and immediately move on to the next project frantically. When I am working on any project, I make a concerted effort to celebrate what I have done as opposed to what I have yet to do.
At this time, I’m cleaning out a storage area in my basement, an absolutely overwhelming job that I have avoided for years. However, I am approaching this project differently. My simple goal is to fill one black garbage bag a day with items which I’ll either toss or donate. After I fill a bag, I am done with that project for the day. When I load a bag, I make an effort to pat myself on my back and celebrate that I have accomplished my goal. “That is one less bag of junk in my basement,” I remind myself.
My current daily routine includes some “productive” activities and a lot of growth activities. I am a person who loves to learn for the sake of learning, and who loves to understand the world through the perspective of others. I recently got to talk to some police officers and saw the world through their eyes.
I tend to be more of a “peace and justice” kind of guy, but I have deliberately been talking to folks who are more of the “less government, more self-responsibility” viewpoint. My learning technique is simple; be respectful of others’ opinions, and they will happily share their perspective with you. I don’t feel a need to push my views on anyone, and I look at conversations as an opportunity to learn, and to connect with someone else. We live in a bipolar world where many people assume that if someone has a different opinion on anything, they are the enemy. What a silly and constricting viewpoint that is. There are good people everywhere, and they are easy to find once you get past your own biases.
I am aware that my retirement is not what I had planned, it is evolving. I’m unclear where it is heading, and I’m OK with that as I don’t have any particular place where I need to go.
My newfound unstructured time has made me more peaceful and less frantic. It has made me more open and less rigid. However, most of all, it has made me happy. In the past, when I was very physically sick, my goal was to use every ounce of energy in productive pursuits that involved either my career life or my family life. By the grace of God, I have been given the one-two punch of newfound health and unstructured time, and I have used these gifts to stretch my behavior in ways that I did not think possible. I am traveling and discovering, I’m learning new disciplines, I’m talking to people who have a different view of the world, and I’m making an effort to celebrate and to be grateful. I’m very excited about my upcoming trip to Glacier National Park, but I also enjoy going grocery shopping with my kids.. I refuse to waste even a single day by ignoring the present in favor of some future goal.
Dear reader, a few years before my retirement, I was both excited and frightened as I had a feeling that something inside of me was changing. I felt like I was floating down a river to parts unknown, and with no ability to control my journey or destination. I still feel like I’m traveling somewhere, but I now think that it is OK to not have total control of everything around me. As I slow down, I become more aware of myself and the world around me. It is fantastic to be retired and to be discovering things about myself and the world around me.
The lessons that I’m learning are simple:
Stay in the present
Be grateful
Connect with others
Accept others for who they are
Be yourself
These lessons can be summarized simply by the statement, “Go with the flow.”
Will I continue along this path a year from now? A month from now? Or even a day from now? I have no idea, The flow will take me where I need to go.
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Dear reader-I’m about to embark on another trip, this time to Glacier National Park. I may try to do some writing while I’m there but I know that I won’t have Internet connectivity. I’ll continue my posts on my return. Peace and Love to you.