Retirement blog about a New Year irritations and work

There’s this bloke who’s written this book. It was reviewed last weekend. I’m buggered if I’m going to name him or it. Why should I give him more publicity when nobody wants to publish my book of blogs? I realise that may sound a little negative but then it’s traditional (post-Christmas blues or some such) at this time of year and, I admit, I am a bit fed up. I’m irritated by a number of things. For example by the Guardian and the Observer and their bias towards young people. You can’t turn the page in the arts section without somebody young looking out at you. I’m all for their need to be represented but I mean keep it real. I’ve been taking these two papers for probably close on 50 years but it’s getting too much.

They clearly have little interest in my age group so I think it’s time to try another paper. True we aging people, as they call us, make the newspaper bit (as opposed to the supplements) because we’re ‘good copy’ in our miserableness. Bad news sells and we have a fair amount of that, but try finding us in the arts section and you’ll have a long search. We are there, but infrequently. True there was recently an article in the paper about ageism and what a terrible thing it is – and it is – but it was fairly garbled I thought and said very little that was new. Just the usual, we have so much to offer and yet we’re over-looked, type thing. It served only to raise my irritability levels rather than reduce them.

Unfortunately the same problem that underpins my other irritations – namely why does BT Sport get equally as good and maybe better sports coverage than Sky for much less money? And why is my broadband speed with Talk Talk (supposedly one of the best, God or whoever, help the rest then) so bloody slow? That’s three massive irritations without trying very hard. And what underpins all three? Inertia that’s what, as in the title of this blog (could have been) in case you were wondering. Except it isn’t because I’ve changed the title as the blog has developed and the topic changed.

I seem to be incapable of changing these ‘providers’ no matter what my level of annoyance. Ditto other irritations, BT phone line, the cost of AA membership, adverts on Classic FM; the changing findings of research – breakfast is good for you, breakfast is bad for you, rapid weight loss is good for you now according to Dr Michael Moseley when it never was, and many others. I have to admit that young people do have that in their favour. If they don’t like the deal then they have no compunction about changing it. Me I just like to moan and I’m doing that rather well I think.

Sorry I went off on one there. The above was not meant to be the topic of this blog in as much as these blogs ever have a clear topic before starting. In as much as they do, the topic of this one was meant to be work, that stuff we used to do before we retired and we became something else altogether different. That’s the topic of the book I started with, the one that I refuse to name. If I understand from the reviews of this book, his message is that work is not all it’s cracked up to be. He provides a few examples of how and why it’s OK not to work this despite the disapprobation of one’s peers.

Well having given up work 5 years ago, under what I assume are socially-acceptable circumstances, i.e. I retired, I can only say that the urge / need to work goes deep. And this even though I fully accept Oscar Wilde’s view (quoted in the article) that “action was the real refuge of people who have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do.” He goes on to say, “To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world because it deprives us of the easy evasions of busyness and purpose.”

How true, how true. Retiring is meant to be so simple. You stop work, kick back, relax and enjoy yourself. Or something along those lines. You do nothing or very little, safe in the knowledge that you have earned this indolence and that it is righteous. Right? Well in my case no, wrong. I am a driven man. In fact it is possible that I may be more driven than when I worked. True, I wasn’t very driven when I did work, so beating that low level bar isn’t very difficult. In fact maybe that’s the problem. I’ve become more driven to make up for a lack of ambition when I worked.

Don’t misunderstand me, it wasn’t that I didn’t care about the quality or effectiveness of my work as a psychologist but I was never what you might call ambitious for the traditional aspects of work – power, position, promotion or even more money (we never had enough no matter how much we earned, but that maybe to do with what one friend’s parents called having Rolls Royce taste on and Austin Seven income). That would have to be modernised for this day and age but I think the principal remains the same.

Anyway here we are, 2019, and traditionally a time for resolutions. Maybe mine should be something to do with stopping beating myself up for not doing enough or not doing enough of the important or even the ‘right’ things, whatever they might be. I have after all been retired now for well over five years so surely it’s time I got the hang of relaxing and having ‘fun’. Of course I could always formulate a resolution about giving up moaning, but, given that’s where I have most fun I feel that would be counter-productive. And if I do give up the two named newspapers where would I get my bonus (alongside the list above) inspiration to complain? Tricky business this retirement and this blog is a ramble.