the first thing that I’d like to do…*
…is shake some of it out.
I need more time. Doesn’t everybody? But the most extraordinary thing about being “retired”–for me–is that I can’t figure out how I ever had time to have a job.
Granted, I have a much bigger house now–and a yard. So that housework takes more time than it used to take–and yard work is a totally new addition to the schedule. On top of it all, I’ve added blogger to the mix–and, sadly, have gotten way too interested in Facebook. But still…
Where does the time go, I wonder.
I think part of what I’m dealing with here is Parkinson’s Law in which work expands to fit the time available for its completion. When all your deadlines are self-imposed, renegotiation is easy. I can always do that tomorrow, you think. And then you’re sunk.
Another part of it, of course, is that now that I have permission to do what I want to do, it is clear that I want to do a lot. I have websites to build, plays to write, novels to read (and write), Chinese to learn, cakes to bake, and on and on and on.
So, in addition to wondering where the time goes, I’m wondering how best to recapture it. I think my progress bars have helped a lot. A visual representation of what I’ve achieved lately goes a long way toward incentivizing (sorry, I hate that word–but it does fit) further achievement.
I’m also wondering how best to prioritize all my projects. No real progress there. (I wish somebody would invent an app that would take all project input and do a cost-benefit analysis on the intangibles of career enhancement, happiness production, contribution to humanity, etc. Pretty sure I’m going to keep on wishing for that one.)
One thing of which I’m fairly certain is that my usual preferred method of diving into something and getting it done and knocking it off the list is just not practical in this new space-time continuum of “retirement.” (I have this impulse, every time I write the word ‘retirement,” to follow it with “LOL!”) My life is now much more like the juggling act it used to be at work when I had dozens of projects to manage. Back then, it was work that required jumping from one thing to another and making incremental progress. Free time was scarce, so it tended to be automatically devoted, in depth and in detail, to whatever I thought was most important.
Now that all time is “free” and everything is important, I’m trying to figure out how best to handle it.
Any ideas? All tips welcome.
* Jim Croce, Time in a Bottle
