November 23, 2010: My first day of full retirement.....Oh, My!!!!

It hardly seemed right to let today come-and-go without writing something.

I can't say that I did much today. I had a very long list of what I intended to be doing, though. Despite the social contract of my list, I seemed to have dodged it almost completely. In my 5-day a week working days, the only fair reason for such procrastination would have been illness -- mine, my child's or else one of the animals. Although the latter would have been a soft reason for doing virtually nothing as far as my co-workers and bosses were concerned.

Apparently no-one told them that in Buddhism, which defines itself as a way of living rather than as a faith, the art of doing nothing is highly esteemed. In fact, a respected Buddhist principle is: Practice the art of doing nothing and everything will happen. Ambiguous, to be sure. But as a Westerner and a once highly productive member of the food chain, I remain captivated by the notion of the "art" of doing nothing. Just go ahead and try it -- it's not as easy as it sounds. In fact, my own admission is a deceit. I have done lots of things today. It's just that none of them conforms to "work" as I have known it -- hence the notion that if I'm not doing something work-like, I am clearly doing nothing at all......

Today I walked the dog (twice); washed the dishes; answered some emails; read a number of illustrated picture books (IPB) in the hopes of getting a brainwave of how they might be made attractive to high school teachers on our ELA website; made lunches for 2; spoke to my mother and my (former) mother-in-law; went to the Pawtisserie to buy victuals for the beasties & chatted with the lovely young woman who works there; took a nap; and read from a new novel called The Lord of Misrule....about which I have nothing to say yet except that the author is American, she writes competently and understands how a good story ought to work and I bought the book because it received high praise from several newspapers that I respect.

Here is what I was on my list: write up the section on IPB's for high school; purge the coat closet in the hall to make room for other people's coats, including my son's; clean out the cat litter; begin a major purge (started earlier this fall) of items various & sundry that need to be thrown out or given away.

As you can see, I didn't even come close, did I?

.....Now, this piece started as a way of commemorating my first day of full retirement. I see from going through the exercise that productivity is a sensitive issue for me : meaning that the spectre of retirement still feels rather daunting.  As usual, I am in a real hurry to arrive at a place long before I've even left the station.