A lighter load...

Thursday, January 2, 2020

This would be the first day of the ‘semi’ in my semi-retirement.  I went to bed early because I was only getting worse and continued to cough throughout the night.  From 3:30 a.m. on, I didn’t sleep hardly at all and finally dragged myself from bed at 5:20 and got ready to go.

I’d made a large batch of salad with chicken breast meat cubed in for my lunches and put a couple of handfuls in a Tupperware container.  I grabbed an apple and a banana for the ride to work and jumped in the car.  Justin, the guy who was going to be working the three days I’d be retired, was waiting in the parking lot when I arrived.  We went over opening up the building and how I’d pass along tasks that needed to be completed along with how we’d communicate such things for about an hour before I got into the day.

I’d been off for most of the past two weeks and there was plenty to do, but I found there was a certain lightness to how I was feeling that I couldn’t at first identify.  As the day progressed and I completed the ‘task’ log I’d created for us, it dawned on me that I was no longer in it alone.  I have been a one-man show for the last six years, owning all of the improvements, repairs, contractor contacts, preventive maintenance, and volunteer groups, to name some of my responsibilities.  I would often go home wondering how I’d complete the next days’ tasks, not always certain if I could do it at all.  I’d taken the job knowing what I didn’t know but thinking I could learn it along the way.  For the most part, I’d done that, but there was, and is, stress is such a situation.

And yet…I wasn’t feeling it anymore…and it felt…wonderful!

Lisa, our volunteer coordinator, and someone I thoroughly enjoy working with, stopped me to ask a question.  “Since you’re off three days a week now…”

“Hold it right there,” I said, “you don’t know how many times I’ve heard that lately and it’s usually followed up with a job I can do.”

“…maybe you’d like to do some side work over at my farm?”

Aviva, another co-worker, was in the room and listening closely.  “My friend Amy who lives around the corner and has opened an new stable really needs a ‘John’.  I should take you over there to meet her, if you’d like to do some extra work,” she concluded.

Actually, I do like working side jobs.  I can do them at my pace and price and take what I want, rejecting stuff I dislike.  In fact, I rode over to Amy’s place to work on a wheelbarrow before heading to Mimi’s to fix her garage door before heading home.

I doubt I will lack for things to do and I’m thinking about them while I’m writing this.  I went to the movies last night to see ‘Ford verses Ferrari’, which was amazing, but skipped any outdoor activity.  Tomorrow is tomorrow and I will exercise on my first true retirement day…a day I would have been working otherwise.