Is it possible that retirement is supposed to be simple? Or at least a simpler version of the life we used to lead? Not an original thought you’ll say but it actually is for me. I think I can say with one thing and another our retirement lives have been quite complicated. Three vehicles, three houses, vineyard, 2 music classes, this blog (currently 3 a week) and that’s before we get started on all the day to day activities, the dogs, DIY and gardening, for example, of late.
Many of these activities have continued throughout the lockdown period. Until recently that is. This week I decided to quit the folk fiddle Zoom group on a Thursday night. And although my jazz group has been putting out video tutorials since we all began socially isolating, I haven’t felt very inclined to watch them. I haven’t even been up to the attic to practise. So no going out Monday or Thursday nights for me and no yoga class for on Tuesday night for Mrs Summerhouse.
Throw into this melting pot the absence of any annual holiday to Ireland and all the organisation and travelling that involves, and again life feels a whole lot simpler. As yet we have no plans to set up a holiday later in the year, not even those hotel visits I used to see as a suitable substitute for long-distance travel.
In a similar vein there have been no trip to the Derbyshire house and very little driving at all. True there have been vineyard visits but probably not as many as before. And of course, as I said in my last blog, fewer people. So yes, recently life has been simpler. And thing is I’ve enjoyed it.
So almost by accident retirement life has become more straightforward. and I have realised that I prefer it that way. True I’ve written in the past about de-cluttering our lives, and we did when we got rid of the gardening business, but this period really has been one of enforced slowerness.
So maybe I won’t go back to my musical classes and maybe we will sell the Derbyshire cottage. I admit that if this happens it won’t quite be me taking bold decisions to take control, establish a firm grip on our comings and goings, but rather accepting what is happening to us. But, that said, there will be a degree of control-taking, de-cluttering, simplifying of our retirement lives.
And to repeat myself this has felt all good. So one has to laugh when the bar of soap slips out of one’s grasp all over again. I need to stop using the word – irony – I’m wearing it out but one last time. It is ironic I think.
Having spent just a little time feeling quite pleased with the slimming down, what should pop up on my phone but a text and an email from the NHS apparently taking me up on my offer of returning to my days as a psychologist. I have no idea what they might want me to do or even if they’ll proceed after I’ve completed all the many requests for information / identification, but you’ve got to agree it’s bloody funny.
I admitted some time ago that I was both annoyed and relieved that they hadn’t accepted my offer of help. This was right at the start of the lockdown period, so that would be what, 10 weeks ago? Not sure exactly, but certainly long enough for me to consign the offer to ‘no longer relevant’ basket.
So here I am in the middle of a period of slimming down, managing to convince myself that the simple life is good, and along comes another potential complication. I would be the first to admit that it is a very, very fine line between simplicity and boredom or between full-on activity and stress but this is clear. If I were to pursue this potential offer, it would enormously complicate my life.
I can’t begin to think why I am even considering it. Just how needy to be needed, am I? How frightened of being bored, of creeping dementia brought about through mental inactivity? I must be seriously worried about losing the balance between activity and atrophy, to even give this offer a second thought. At the start of lockdown I wanted to do my bit, now I don’t feel like offering the government any help. I am, in many ways, disillusioned about the whole business.
Whoops might have wandered off-topic a bit there. The subject of this retirement blog was originally, when I started, quite clear. Can I get more pleasure out of my retirement by keeping it simple? That is, not too many activities, not too much travelling, too many places to visit and so on.
I got a taste of it when I cancelled my folk fiddle evening. Now it remains to be seen whether I take this any further. I think I can say with confidence that I won’t be complicating my life to any greater extent by joining up with the NHS, by returning to my working days. They’re off the table.
PS. They just called me, I said no.