Retirement

I am really looking forward to retirement.  But not perhaps for the reasons you may imagine.

Since I went the self-employed route, every day has been basically a mad rush.  On duty 24x7, one gets completely bound up by work, work-related thoughts, work tasks, and circling that single theme.  Weekdays, week nights and weekends - it's all the same.

There really is no time or space to think of or do anything else than plod on.  One of the reasons why my once-prolific blog is now almost silent.  (heck, even typing these three paragraphs have proven almost impossible!)

But my soul is multi-faceted and not singular.  In those brief moments where I'm not all about work, the brain flashes through images and inspiration of things I want to do and try and accomplish and research that have nothing to do with the daily grind.  A whole lot of them in fact.  There are projects and art and business ideas and garden stuff and places to see and things to learn or explore or discover or experience.  Things that take time and mental space which I simply not have now.  Most, of course, also need funds, but many are fund-generating and self-sustaining.  While I'm still working flat-out there simply is no space for anything else.  Hence retirement.  It's probably the only time I'll get to do these things.

On the other hand, I look at some of our retired clients and acquaintences.  So many of them are bored out of their minds.  They spend their days pottering aimlessly around - renovating their retirement homes can only go so far, and then what?  Bowls on a Tuesday?  Soup on a Thursday?  Afternoon naps and still in bed by 8pm?  No, that life is not for me.  I'd go mad.

We do have one or two who have managed to amass enough funding during their working lives to travel the globe, take on all sorts of interesting things and generally keep out of mischief, but they're the exception, not the norm.  They're sorta what I'm aspiring to though.  A retired life lived less ordinary, and certainly not slowly going off your rocker with mundaneness.

I just hope by the time I retire my mind hasn't left the building, and that I can actually remember what I wanted to do - as well as implement it...