One Hundred and Eighty-Six Days

11 July 2020

Six full months of retirement have now passed. Whew, so fast have gone these one hundred and eighty-six days.  

No, I am not bored.  No, I am not stressed.  Well, I am stressed just like most people I know are stressed given the circumstances of the pandemic, but nothing beyond that. Yes, I am disappointed that I am not in Europe. Yes, I am finding a way to count daily victories. Hey on Thursday I dropped off 17 bankers boxes to the document destruction place.  Also using WW, I have in the last 7 weeks lost 10 pounds.

There are some rituals that have become very important.  Exercise is the number one ritual.  I had worked my way up to a sixty to seventy-minute fast walk, but I have backed down to about 40 to 45 minutes at a time.  It just feels like a better fit. My body at the end of seventy minutes seems to take a little too long to snap back.

As for keeping informed of the world around me I have to be careful not to ingest too often or too much. When I spend a day tied to the radio or the computer news feed, I find my hands clenched in rage.  My teeth grind and I am sure my blood pressure goes up.  So, I listen to three or four news podcasts first thing when I get up.  In total these pods of information clock in at about 45 minutes.  I try not to return to monitoring events as the day progresses.  If a thing in the stream of noise is important, it will still be important tomorrow.

I have come to rely on my Apple music suggestions for new music each week.  For years I didn’t have my ear tuned to new music, but hey I am retired now and I have time to listen. Over the past eight weeks since I started doing this, I have found a great number of emerging artists I really like.  There have been some tunes I knew as soon as I heard them, would become regulars in my personal playlist.

On this particular day, July 11, the sky is clear.  Looking out at the yard the tendrils of grass wave in the mild wind now blowing from west to east.  Joe Cocker sings a soulful reading of Bob Dylan’s Catfish. So lush, so green this summer world.  Flowers adorn the table where I work. So beautiful, so peaceful.