Busy

Most everyone I know has lived and still lives very busy lives. You would think that as my peer group transitioned into retirement that this would change. You would be wrong. 

 

Everyone seems to be as busy as ever, but in a different way. Whereas our previous work life could be summarized as a solid red line spanning from Monday to Friday and a short blue line denoting Saturday and Sunday, now our calendars look like a constellation of scattered colored dots. Mine, for example, in the past few weeks is a potpourri of doctor and dentist appointments, gathering with college alums, SF School alum teachers, the Men’s Group, online Zooms with folks in Brazil, Austria and Virginia to arrange various work opportunities, two different Zoom Board meetings, guest classes at three different local schools, playing piano at two Senior Homes and yet more. A call to arrange a lunch with a friend involves scrolling through our separate calendars for some five minutes before we can find a time we’re both free.

 

We are made for activity, we are made to work, we are made for social gathering and whereas our previous work lives guaranteed some version of all three without the need to arrange them all, it’s up to us in our retired lives to fill in the calendar ourselves. A work schedule feels like a symphony or suite, an ongoing piece of music with a theme announced on Monday that develops and heads towards the climax of Friday and there is a great satisfaction in that. The retired live is often like listening to a lot of short 3-minute songs in many different styles. Each song is pleasurable, but this kind of listening often lacks the continuity and the sense of a thread running through all the days that brings meaning and purpose. 

 

My particular retired life bounces back and forth between the two as I continue to teach 5-10 day courses or work on a book that has that larger design. And then have periods in-between with that colored-dot, short-song format. That’s where I am at the moment, with some of those dots the work needed to arrange more long-form work—negotiate dates, money, visas, flights for courses months ahead. Not as fun as actually teaching those courses, but it must be done. 

 

And so my busy day begins.