The Ink-Pot and the Palette

I...have no idea where this came from.

( If No Work And Pay doesn't deserve a sonnet, I don't know what does. )

I can't decide whether the best invention ever right now is kneepads, utility knives, audiobooks or ibuprofen. All of these have played major roles in my life the last few days.

( It's a good tired )

I've never been able to stick to an "exercise program," (bleh) so changing my transportation mode from passive to active was perhaps the greatest stroke of genius I've ever had.¹

For the last four and half years, my daily eight-mile bike commute to and from work has been what gets me off my ass--the only thing. I was a little worried that retirement, in removing my biggest transportation need, would find me slowly melding with my armchair, never to budge again.

Instead, I've discovered that I'm riding my bike more than ever.

First of all, I have time to bike to destinations that, when I was working full time, would have taken too long. I have time to figure out a safe route to a new place, to get a little lost², to go in daylight, to choose my weather.

And second of all, I don't have to get everything done in one go on Sunday. I can make multiple trips, any day of the week. Whoops, forgot toilet paper? Four miles round trip to Fred Meyer. Return a book? Branch library across town. That fabric store that's out in the semi-urbs? Worth a shot.

Today I rode clear out past the ring of freeways to an acupuncture appointment that has always previously been a train trip. From there, since I was in the neighborhood, I stopped by my sister's--the one I don't see as much of because she lives "out there"--and pedaled home again in the gathering dark, for a 19-mile day.


View Bike to Lynne's in a larger map

¹ Selling my car was an important part of everything. Side note: my driver's license has expired and I should probably do something about that. I could ride my bike to the DMV. :D

² Sometime since I first starting biking, Google has added voice navigation to the bike layer of its maps, and it's awesome! Now I just need an app that has Paul Bettany's voice saying, "In six hundred feet, turn left onto the I-205 Bike Path. No, left, madam. The other left. That's it..."

I sort of saw this coming. I mean, the question when you're about to retire is "What are your plans?" My answer has been, "To do nothing for a while and see what develops."

So here I am, a week in, with all the time in the world on my hands, and of course what develops is a mild case of the shoulds. It occurred to me this morning that there's an infinite list of things I "should" be doing with all this free time. What's at the top of the list varies from hour to hour, but it includes

• Work on [____]
• Finish [___]
• Start [___]
• Go and [___]
• Decide on [___]

...you get the idea.

Trouble is, I don't really feel like doing any of those things right at the moment. Right at the moment, I'm on my second pot of coffee. I'm reading a so-so book that I wouldn't have taken time for in the past. It's rainy and windy out. The cat is asleep on the next chair.

So here's the big question: do I have the courage to follow through on my plan of making no plans until a plan comes and grabs me by the solar plexus and tugs me into action?

And while I'm trying to figure that out, should I maybe go out and buy some more coffee beans?

Happy New Year everybody. Happy new phase of life, me!

I quit making New Year's resolutions a lot of New Years ago--total recipe for failure, in my book--but given that this January 1 will also be the first day of the rest of my life in a more particular way than every other day of the world, I'm giving it some thought.

The thing that has given my life its structure more or less continuously since 1970 is suddenly going to drop away. My external motivation for getting up in the morning, grooming myself, wearing decent clothes, leaving my house, and (in recent years) getting exercise will be no more.

I don't yet have a clue what will replace it. In my limited experience of unemployment, the lack of structure is not my best friend. But the key word is "limited." Will a month of do-nothing nightowl-dom be enough for a more natural structure to start appearing? Two months? How could I know? I've never tried it.

What's more, the fact of having a job has been one of a very few connections I feel to "most people," a broad if rather shallow patch of common ground. Google Plus keeps reminding me to list my workplace in my profile, because without it, I'm only 80% complete.

So, what new scaffolding will I build to keep my life from dissolving into a puddle of undifferentiated time?

I have no idea yet. I should probably be terrified. Maybe I am terrified and I just don't know it. How does one feel at an event horizon?

Hi everyone. It's my birthday! Which, after 57 previous ones, isn't all that big a deal. But I took the day off work, had acupuncture, went out to breakfast-for-lunch, got my nails done, and came home in the very cold December evening to eat really rather a lot of French chocolate.

I was dreadfully sick last week--like bedridden-and-housebound for six days, miss-Thanksgiving-dinner level sick. It was mostly just the worst cold in the world, I think. At the nadir of it I ruptured an eardrum and had conjunctivitis in both eyes, so I was half-deaf and half-blind and it was generally awful. (Bragg's raw apple cider vinegar, diluted on a cotton pad and wiped along the lower lid, stings like hell but makes short work of the pinkeye, by the way.)

Long story short, I'm a million percent better now, though still a bit hearing impaired in the one ear. Back to breathing, sleeping, and riding my bike.


Birthday nails

Hardly any job left in my life now:

Retirement countdown

The very pleasant, cheerful bureaucrat who helped me fill in all the blanks in my retirement paperwork this morning shook my hand when we were done and said, "Retirement is such a different thing today than it used to be. You have a whole new life ahead. I wish you the best."

I walked back to the bus stop in the October morning, looking at the perfect sky and the yellow trees, thinking, "I want to remember this day." It was a big occasion. I felt like celebrating, but it was 10:00 on a Monday morning and I had to catch a bus back in from the suburbs and go to work. So I texted a couple of "Woo hoo"s to people, then rode downtown and got myself a four-shot mocha. Then I went to work.

Only 63 more days.

Do you ever feel like you're just...disappearing?

I have the oddest sensation lately that I barely exist. I'm sure my imminent retirement has something to do with it--one of my lifelong mooring lines is about to be cast off. I've never been very engaged with my work or my coworkers, and now I'm even less so.

I don't think that's the whole story, though. I can't figure out how to describe it. But, as we say in EFT, "if you did know how to describe it, what do you think you'd say?"

It's...hollow. Quiet. Becalmed. In a fog. When I home in on it, there's fear at the center that I don't want to look at. It's probably not a monster--more like a Dweller on the Threshold. (...there come cycles wherein the Dweller on the Threshold appears and confronts the aspirant, challenging his purpose and progress and blocking the door which leads to expanded life and liberation. The Dweller challenges the freedom of the human soul.¹)

If I get the nerve to confront it, I'll let myself know. Meanwhile, have a pretty picture from my morning commute: