I’m not sure I dare even write this but here I go. And after all I’ve written over the last few months about wanting to return my retirement life to what I’ve persistently called ‘normal’, you might think I’ve got some damned cheek but as The Animals once sang many years ago, ‘It’s my life and I’ll do what I want’. At least I think they did. But you get the gist.
I can’t put it off any longer. I’ve had a complete change of plan and instead of trying to pick up the pieces of my previous retirement life and worrying that I wasn’t and creating a good deal of anxiety for every week that goes by and I’m not succeeding in my ambitions, I’ve decided to stop trying.
Specifically I’m not even going to try with the music or at least the ‘public’. This including Thursday night Folk Fiddle guitar rehearsals and similarly jazz keyboard at the weekend. I may play a little on my own in the attic, but that will be within my control and at my relaxed choosing. (And that is what I’ve done with my last two or three sessions since I started writing this particular blog).
These blogs I’ll continue with at about two weekly intervals (a far cry from the three blogs and one podcast per week). I think that at this frequency I will maintain a balance between pleasure and therapy. I may even hold onto my position at number one for retirement blogs on Google. Not sure.
The vineyard we’re in the process of trying to sort out who does what. Tasks to be divided between ourselves (nothing too strenuous); the children, Jobs that Brian (our previous help can or is willing to do) and Gersch (strange name but his strimming was fine last year), our new guy will do on a paid basis. Then we have our working relationship with our neighbour whose own grapes should come on stream this year. He has all the wine-making equipment at his place including most of ours. Some sorting out to do this year.
So there’s about a week’s gap between me starting to write this blog and today when I intend to finish it. That means that I’ve had the opportunity to put my new philosophy of retirement living into practice. I am removing the pressure I’ve been putting on myself trying to get back to where I was with my key activity areas.
In terms of travel well nothing spectacular just one trip down to Derbyshire and a postponed visit to the vineyard (but soon to be reinstated) Not very impressive but again removing the pressure to go places has felt like a sensible way of living my retirement life.
What this means is that I am changing my usual way of living my retirement. Whereas before my health issues I was all about setting challenges for myself (usually achievable ones but some quite demanding) and ‘driving myself to be successful by living within these challenges. Can you detect the stress inherent in this statement?
In fairness to myself this way of motivating myself through this form of goal-setting has worked well for me – up to now. But now I think I need to lower the bar you might say, treat myself with a little more gentleness, as befits a man still struggling with the results of two quite significant medical procedures. It will be interesting to see in the coming weeks whether I manage to live by the creed of ‘being gentle with myself’. I confess that on paper it all sounds fairly sensible. But…