77

Many thoughtful, sweet comments appeared in response to my retirement post yesterday. Thank you! I have a few thoughts on questions you asked, so let me start with those.

First -- the most frequently asked question that comes my way is this: do you have any plans for retirement?

And the answer is simple: I do, but I'm trying hard not to commit to any of them (except for two... well, maybe three...). For so long, I've been doing a quick step: from one hour to the next, from one day to another in a sprightly and deliberate way, always with a schedule in the recesses of my soul, I am most looking forward to a freedom from it. At least for a while. Where Monday is like Saturday and September is like June and things don't have to fit around some other agenda. I want to see what it's like to wake up in the morning and to make up the agenda right there, on the spot. Without a to-do list.

Of course, I do have one goal and that is to pick up my Great Writing Project (great, as in big) and finish it! I've been working on a book for as long as I've known Ed. That's a long time! And I have bigger and better ideas for it, which in itself is terrible because it means yet again, it will be reworked from the beginning.

So there's that.

The other goal is to get stronger. You may find that to be sort of odd for a retirement goal, but I love physical strength and only during my trips away from home have I felt like I actually build stamina. So -- lift boulders, swim oceans -- whatever it takes. I will do it.

Then come the improvement goals: improve my photo skills, my photoshop skills, my use of the camera! Improve my languages! Get really fluent in my third and fourth one. Read the books I reserve at the library. Take classes! Yes! School is in my blood. Improve Ocean, improve the farmette, too, though that's rather seasonal.

And I know I'm cheating now because I'm on number four and you see -- this is the danger, I do not want to become a slave to lists, but this one is so obvious that if I don't put it down here, you'll think I'm dishonest: travel. There will be travel. But in the way that I cannot travel now, when I am tied to my work. Off season, more spontaneous, guided by price and interest, nothing else.

So no lists just yet. But, oh, to wake up each morning as if I were on a trip across the ocean -- enthusiastic about the possibilities! So many possibilities!


All that is a while away (77 calendar days!). Today was still rooted in routine.

Of breakfast...






Of work -- in the front room today, to vary things a little. Next to my little chickens.






Of visiting my daughter's cat who is alone today. And looking like she knows exactly how to hang back and do not much of anything!






Of working at our raspberry patch, just for a short spell!

Of checking up on my outdoor annuals, now smiling away indoors.











Of cooking dinner...






...of finding a minute to write here, on Ocean.

Of allowing myself to think ahead just a little to the end of work.