Lessons from Retirement - Month 1. Applicable to current situation.

In reviewing my isolation strategy and making big plans for my continued health and well being, I found the following diary entry from my first month of retirement.

I have not settled comfortably into the “space without pre booked time that is life without paid employment. I have very strange feelings of my activities being either too fast or too slow for the hours in the day, and I wrestle with the need to be undertaking meaningful activity as opposed to the slightly stronger desire to be indulging in long periods of meaningless activity.

To resolve this not grave but gently disquieting dilemma, I have colonised the couch. I call it Comfort Island in a nod to the endless stream of reality TV I have been consuming. It must be noted however that in deference to the arctic climate of this particular island location , I am not baring my bikini body , or indulging in seduction of any sort, although I am accessorising with soft furnishings including an oversupply of tastefully coloured cushions , several huge throws and an old tortoiseshell cat.

The island is littered with bucket lists, recipes , old coffee cups and books …library ( recently joined and the source of marvellous albeit mediocre modern girl love stories ) and bought, too many to mention. The books are piling and spilling and teetering lopsidedly. The cat tiptoes for fear of being felled by a literary missile .

Retirement and Corona lesson 2 : Taking to the couch and saturating yourself in dreadful television and equally unrealistic romance novels is not a Plan B. It is also unworthy of someone old enough to retire, although in the age of corona ....? There will be days ....I am just going with them. There is something wonderful about surrender.