Retirement, Year 2

 

Second Beach, Washington

The first anniversary of my retirement was Saturday, so today is the first weekday after the first anniversary of my retirement, so I am writing something. One thing that I did not expect: my weekends are less productive than my weekdays. This is because Jarrod and Jackie work during the week, leaving me uninterrupted time to do whatever I want, which means I can schedule stuff. Weekends are harder.

So what should I do with my second year? Well, let's start by looking at last year's goals, then we can move forward from there. Here are my year one goals, with some evaluation of results:

Health: I still walk every evening, but additional walking got waylaid by an injury to my Achilles heel that lasted six months and has not gone away completely after ten months. My health is not great right now.

Learn to Cook: I have settled into making dinner more or less five nights per week. I am not a great cook, but I prepare food.

Housework: As with most things I take on, I don't do an exemplary job, but I have vacuumed the house several times, mopped floors, cleaned toilets, washed the windows.

Yard work: I am always behind on the weeding and on keeping the grass looking good, but I have pruned and replanted and filled many bags with yard waste.

Piano: I practice three songs, sometimes. I am getting better but cannot play any of them well yet.

Weekend activities: Jackie and I found that we could do road trips reasonably safely during the plague year, so we did a couple, to Yellowstone and to Walla Walla & Crater Lake. Still, our activities were curtailed.

Writing: I don't think that I am going to worry too much about writing. I wrote seven blog posts last year versus two the year before, but I find myself with not that much to say.

Community activities: These got wiped out almost entirely by Covid-19.

One thing that is really clear is that I set a lot of goals that I could sort of do and sort of not do, and then I dabbled at all of them, which is exactly like me. This year, fewer goals. I will still do the activities from year one, but those are mostly ongoing everyday tasks.

So this year, it will be two activities from last year's list that were constrained by Covid-19: weekend trips and community activities.

We have ideas for a couple of weekend trips - around the Olympic Peninsula is one, and visiting my sister who recently moved to Washington is another. We can come up with more later. The biggest challenge is that we have already done a lot of the things that are available to do close to home.

I looked up clubs in our community (called Jubilee.) Most are on hold right now, but they should restart within the next two months. Jackie wants to play Bingo on Saturdays, and I will do that with her because I am an agreeable husband. Jubilee also has Chess Club, French Club (parlons francais), breakfast and lunch clubs, Hiking Club, and Jubilee Democrats, among others.

This year the goal is to get out of the house and spend time with people, one goal really, keeping it simple. I suspect that most people have similar goals for this year. We all need to reconnect with humanity.