There’s many a time I have an idea for one of these retirement blogs and I might not start writing it straight away then I come back to it and I think, nah, that won’t work and I have to think of another topic. Well this is like that only different.
In this case I’m thinking that’s a stupid idea but I’m still going ahead with it. Even though I’m pretty sure it’s an idea with little substance. Only one way to find out. The idea hardly bears repeating. It is that in an effort to determine what my post-health scare life should be about, I should give up on all those things that have made my life meaningful thus far. You see even as I write it I think that’s never going to work.
There’s an element of sense about it based on the struggle I’ve had post-ops to re-establish those key activities of my previous life. If you’ve been reading these blogs from the beginning you won’t need reminding that broadly these were – playing music, growing grapes in our vineyard, travel in this country and abroad and writing this blog.
The latter I’ve adapted by changing my ambitions from writing 2 or 3 blogs a week to writing one approximately once every two or three weeks. This has worked for me and, if my Google ranking is to be believed, for you out there as well. So some writing still happening. The vineyard should be OK this year (it wasn’t last year) by virtue of delegating the tasks to family and paid labour. Playing music still happens but not with other people whichis a bit of a shame but arguably better than nowt, as they say in these parts.
We continue to try and travel although all our previous ventures barely exist – no hotels, trips to that London, overseas, long distance travel. All make me feel weary at their mere prospect. True we’ve managed the odd trip down to Derbyshire. This despite a small degree of pressure (external and my own) to sell the property. And the dog-walking continues although at a greatly reduced time and distance.
But as I was contemplating what a struggle this, call it partial re-establishment, has been I had the idea that has become the mysterious topic of this blog. Why not give up everything I’ve done so far and re-design a new form of my retirement, one that takes into account how bloody tired and achy I feel all this time, the lingering psychological legacy of two operations and the slow, on-going recovery from them and, although so carefully chosen way back when, my decreasing enthusiasm for those activities. And that is more scary than any of the post-operative / recuperation thoughts.
I suppose it was the music that first put this idea in my brain. Along the lines of you’ve done that (the public stuff) for a number years, so give it up be glad that you gave it a shot and move on to something else. Same with the vineyard and the travel, even this blog. You’ve been there, done that, move on.*
500 words so far and it all sounds fine. Just move onto to some new form of retirement at the age of 75 and ten years retired. The hard part is what will this look like? If I compare past diaries with my current ones (last two years) the difference is plain to see. In the previous life, all of the above while this version has been a lot of reading and watching TV and the afore-mentioned dog walks.
I still hold to one pre-op view of a good retirement – that it should be balanced. OK so with that as an underpinning what do I do? Continue reading future blogs to see if I can answer this simple question.
*There’s an implication here for a view of all of my past life here but that’s for another time or maybe not.