What to do?

I've had many people ask me, since I retired, what I'm going to do.  I suppose I understand that question, but it befuddles me a little. All the time I was in the rat race, working what felt like 24/7 at a teaching job that could never be done and never be good enough, I dreamed about the things I could do if only...


If only has arrived and I'm doing them now.  So when I answer the question ---- what are you going to do? ---- I'm not sure what to say.  I write and publish books.  That sounds like a real occupation, at least to some people.  Because that's what it seems like that question means.  What REAL WORK are you going to do?  What will you do to keep yourself busy? How will you justify taking up space on the planet, breathing the oxygen, using the resources?  Because, heaven forbid that someone in good health should not be busy, right?


So yes, I love my new occupation as novelist.  I even like the sound of that word.  Novelist.  It hearkens back to a probably imaginary time when staying busy and making money were not the sum total of a life well lived.  Literary discussions, salons, ink stained hands and hand-written manuscripts. Longfellow, Emerson, Alcott.  Katherine Anne Porter.


But truly, that's not all that I do.   As the weeks and months go by, I'm rediscovering facets of myself that I'd forgotten or never developed.  I listen to more music and sometimes I even dance around by myself.  The dogs would never think of laughing at me. I'm cooking again, from the imagination, from necessity, from cookbooks.


 I'm listening.  Every so often during the day, I close my eyes and listen to my breath and to the sounds around me.  It doesn't last long, but it brings me into the present moment and calms anything that's fluttering in my mind or my body.


Sometimes I watch movies, the ones that Jill won't like, or anybody else that I know.  I browse through the Netflix offerings and pick out the most obscure documentaries, the old black and white romances, the song and dance films.  If I fall asleep in the middle, oh well.  I'm sometimes napping, too.  I also can read.  I've read more books in the past 6 months than I did in the last 3 years I was teaching.  I thought, towards the end of my working life, that I was losing my capacity to read and remember.  I thought I was on the slide to, if not Alzheimers, at least old age and infirmity.  Turns out that's simply untrue.  Right now, my memory and capacity for reading and writing is better than it's been in years.  Funny thing about stress and lack of sleep. It seems  they're not good for you.


I do go out of the house.  I have plenty of opportunities to be of service, because isn't that the other thing you're supposed to do after you retire?  I'm lucky to be there for my mother as she needs more attention and more help.  I can run errands, give rides, make appointments, lend an ear or a shoulder.  And not just for her ---- I have enough family members around here to spread the good stuff around.


I go for walks.  I play with dogs. I clean the house and hang out the laundry and tend the vegetable garden and talk with my neighbors.  I have coffee with friends and meet new people at the dog park. I take good care of my wife, which makes me very happy.


If I'm not working, what can I do?  Pretty much anything I want!  And so far, I've only scratched the surface.