Retirement

And so my empty journal begins to fill.  If you read the blog from Monday, I was commenting that a new year begins like an empty journal and with each day, you fill it with entries from the year.  Here it is only a quiet rainy Saturday and I am already blogging again, as I try to ‘schedule’ daily activities in retirement.

This week, I managed to get three years worth of filing done, cleaned up the office, loaded up the new bookshelves, saw the dentist and began to pack away all the Christmas stuff.  I had discovered in 1998 that if you don’t plan anything, nothing gets done.  So, every day, I have a task or two that I want to accomplish.  I don’t want to take on too much at a time and tax my MS and I want to make sure I include some reading time!

Today’s task, after I finish blogging, is to take the ornaments off the two Christmas trees that I have and pack up the trees, as well as bringing in the outside decorations.  Then, sadly, Christmas is truly over for another year.

My overall plan is to go through the house closet by closet and room by room and get rid of stuff, organize things and basically make my life easier by making the things I use the most more easily accessible.  Somewhere in there, I will organize my paperwork for the taxes, so that as soon as I get all my receipts, I can get them done and submitted and get onto the next thing.

So, I often get asked how retirement is.  Well, I think that this is the first week that I have actually felt like I can think about that.  Before now, I was so busy with paperwork for the severance and retirement, and then there was so much to do for Christmas, that I couldn’t really look at it like retirement.  Now, I have a bit of time on my hands, like a retiree should!

I’m enjoying it so far!  At the end of the year, I will see what the year was all about and decide then, if retirement suits me.

Well, one thing hasn’t changed I see, as I watch two sleeping cats on my desk.  They still want to be near me and whether I’m doing ‘work work’ or I’m just blogging or doing my morning e-mail/Twitter/Facebook stuff, life for them hasn’t changed.

Here’s to things that change and things that remain the same!  God Bless!