BACK TO ROUTINE

With the days growing shorter, the sun changing angles and the cool down of the air, summer is over, and the easy living is gone. No more light meals (nothing dark), and uneventful nights, gone is the floating sensation of the cool water in the pool on a humid day, and Carvel ice cream after dinner.

Getting back into the grove that suddenly becomes a rut takes over and with it the constant check of the calendar, commitments are made, things to do and we race against the holidays arriving one on top of the other. Day and night meetings are the norm for the rest of the next three seasons.

Already my November board meeting had to be rescheduled for December because our customary Tuesday falls the same week as Thanksgiving Day! I already have 2 out of town meetings scheduled, and numerous meetings along the way scheduled and to still schedule. Already I need a break!

Getting back in the grove is never easy, and for me this is as close to returning to work after a vacation or long weekend will get. How I dreaded the night before returning to work, the thought of having meetings, meeting deadlines and having to deal with not only underlings but also those over me.

There is certain strangeness to getting back on the routine, and a certain comfort to what you do know. Work has always excited me to the point of feeling I accomplished something and secure in the feeling that I had a paycheck to bring home, a career to further and was part of the real world, with friends and associates. That is why I maintain a schedule of regular hours in my retirement, doing things to keep me busy and having some fun in doing it.

Since I retired I have been having fun, writing is one of my pleasures I never had time for, yet always had an urge to put pen to paper. I love to cook, can devise a recipe at a moments notice with what I have in the house or can dream one up.

Doing charitable work and being involved in helping others is really the way to go! It has continued my sense of accomplishment, increased my observatory instincts and enhanced my sense of humor I feel. I find myself laughing at myself more and more each day!

And now my Sundays, I take home my daughter, or enjoy a ballgame with my nephew, making fun of the ballplayers and giving them nicknames that my nephew finds hilarious, or just talking sports with him. I miss #1 Son and talking sports since he moved to California, and my younger son is not a sports fan, so my nephew certainly ties that up for me.

Sometimes in the still of a quiet rainy afternoon during the week, I will sit in my chair and think about the days gone by, people I knew who have passed on and even the crises I have lived through, and take a big breath and enjoy the quiet.

And so I think retirement has been a wonderful gift to me, one I wouldn’t trade anything for. I am reading books I never got to, watching movies I meant watch and having occasional lunches with old friends and won’t ask for more.

I hope this didn’t bore you, and have a great autumn!