The Retired Life

“How’s retirement?” people ask. My answer? 

 

“I love my schedule. I love my boss.”

 

Truly. Wonderful to be answerable to the decisions I make rather than those someone else in power makes. Of course, we’re never wholly free— from Supreme Court Justices to the person organizing my next workshop, I’m always entangled with some people making decisions that affect me. But certainly not as much.

 

And likewise, I’m never wholly free from schedule. Said workshops, teaching/mentoring at schools, meeting a friend for lunch— I still need to answer to the skills of preparing things so I arrive on time. But nowhere near the daily commute beholden to traffic, failed alarm clocks and such.

 

Except today. My hosts agreed to drive me to the subway to get to the bus station downtown. But we left a bit on the late side, the subway token machine didn’t take my credit card, I waited in line at Tim Horton’s for a muffin to get change and got on the subway 45 minutes before my bus was to leave. And that was the estimated time to get through the 23 stops. The train sat for a maddening 10 minutes and finally off we went. It was not looking good.

 

Arrived at the station at 11:43, ran to find the bus station and got there at 11:48. Out of breath, I asked the man at the window, “Did I miss the 11:45 bus to Rochester?” and he casually said, “Oh, that was cancelled. Next bus is at 1:45." I was so happy to hear it that I didn’t question why no one from the bus company contacted me! On that subway ride, I was imagining renting a car or just hoping that there was another bus, because now I had a serious deadline. Had to arrive to teach my workshop tomorrow at a State Music Conference.

 

So after a few years of a more relaxed schedule and not the kind of stress to arrive somewhere that has you cursing in traffic, here it was again. No fun, but makes for a (possibly) entertaining story. Especially when it turns out well.

 

In Buffalo now awaiting the next bus. Hope I keep track of the time!