Planning to Plan
I have found that people who get paid for their work sometimes have a bit of trouble imagining how people like me who are no longer paid for work spend our time. I get many versions of “So what do you do all day?” when together with my paid-for-work friends. I get it. I was like that as well, thinking that once retired I would have all kinds of time on my hands and not know what to do with it. And I do have a fair amount of control over how I spend my time and what I choose to prioritize, as well as being blessed that I can support myself (for now) without having to depend on a paying job. On a certain level I am fortunate that I don’t have obligations outside of myself - my child is grown, my parents and husband are gone, and I’m no longer accountable to a supervisor or client (it goes without saying that I would gladly welcome those lost family members back into my life, but the reality is what it is). When you are closely connected to certain people on a daily basis, they influence the decisions you make for yourself. Your own desires, wants and needs understandably get compromised in the interest of the greater good of the family or work situation. That is no longer the case for me. But despite the blank slate staring at me from my future, why do I still feel like I don’t have time to do the things I want to do now that I (supposedly) have the time to do them and no obstacles standing in the way?
The List
You might understand my dilemma when you see my latest list of projects I’m working on or thinking about (this is definitely NOT in order of priority - below is a brain dump of my current aspirational activities as they came to me while writing):
Finish plotting out the October/November camping trip to California (the road trip portion of what I’ve labelled The 1938 Project). I have firm plans in place for only the first week and a half, and about 50 more days to figure out. I haven’t thought about the trip much for well over a month, and have no clue where I’ll be staying after October 10 (the road trip will last until early December). With so much left to prepare there is a good reason that it came up first in my brain, and yet I continue meandering through this article…
Finish planning the July camping trip to New England. I’m happy to report this one is pretty far along, which is a good thing given that July is only a couple of weeks away.
Practice my banjo EVERY DAY - this requires repeatedly forcing my stiff, aging fingers to contort and stretch to reach the impossibly difficult places on the fretboard so that I can make a feeble stab at emulating my heroes Earl Scruggs and Bela Fleck. I’m sure they probably wouldn’t even recognize my efforts as music if they ever heard me. I’m intentionally shouting the “EVERYDAY” in the hope that by loudly proclaiming this intention it might actually happen, in which case I might eventually, one day, in the far distant future, attend and play in an informal bluegrass jam (this could be a subject for a future blog post if I ever get the courage to pick my banjo in front of a group of unknown musicians…).
Continue my historical and family research - there is a fair amount of the Larson story I feel a need to tell before I actually leave for the October California trip. I want to set the stage and historical context for the journey taken in 1938 and I haven’t been making much progress since we said goodbye to Will Larson and his descendants a few weeks ago.
Write and post a blog article or work on some other creative writing EVERY WEEK (again, thinking it might happen if I shout it to the proverbial rafters). This means I need to have something to write about and then develop the idea into something I consider “blog-worthy” (an admittedly low and subjective threshold, exemplified by this article that isn’t really about much of anything…).
Teach myself how to crochet doilies. After buying hooks, several balls of crochet thread (that, somehow, all ended up to be the same color), watching some YouTube videos and reading an instruction book, I made one and a half doilies and then put it all aside, discouraged by my less than perfect eyesight and clumsy fingers. My fantasy is that if I can churn out a coaster-size doily in thirty minutes or less, I can stockpile enough in my spare time to give away to people I meet on my camper travels.
Weed my garden REGULARLY, which would cut down on the wear and tear on my back when I wait too long. I have high hopes for my newest tool that I’m told is a game-changer for us older adults.
Finish my spring cleaning agenda of washing windows, sorting and rearranging closets, cabinets and storage areas, tossing old, useless stuff, deep cleaning into corners and under beds, etc. (given that I’m unlikely to get all this done before June 21, I should probably be calling it “summer cleaning” at this point).
Finish the books I’ve started or want to read. This one is daunting, given the growing number of fiction and nonfiction books I have lying around or electronically on my tablet. They are all in various stages of completion (or not started). I can’t seem to walk out of a bookstore without at least two or three new books I can’t wait to read, but then I do wait and they inevitably get added to the unread pile. Staying out of bookstores altogether is not an option for me as I consider it to be one of life’s great little pleasures. Even if I could, I’m also vulnerable to the recommendations of others, whether it be from friends, relatives, strangers, etc. (and Amazon is only a click away…)
Practice my sketching. In typical fashion and with great enthusiasm (see #6, above) I signed up for (and purchased) an online pencil sketching course and proceeded to invest in all the “necessary” tools I was sure I would need: an array of pencils, erasers, a special, dedicated sketchbook, even special ink pens of various shades of gray and black for adding texture and nuance once I got good. I haven’t touched any of it in many months and never made it past the first few lessons that teach you how to hold the pencil and draw straight lines, ovals and circles. My original thinking (another fantasy) was that if I could learn some drawing techniques I could sketch the beautiful images from my travels rather than always relying on photos to jog my memory. I haven’t given up on this one, and am hoping that one day my sketchbook will be full of something other than straight lines and curves.
Do a physical activity at least ONCE PER DAY - kayaking, hiking, walking, pickleball, biking are currently all acceptable choices.
Figure out how I’m going to use the mountains of Peach Truck peaches that are about to descend upon my household over the next 6-8 weeks, and then execute the plan in the tiny window of about 48 hours between when they arrive and when they become overripe. Although peaches are by far my favorite fruit, I have to face the fact every year that there are only so many peach pies, cobblers, and shortcakes that I can eat in the days before the next box arrives (my son who lives with me is not a fan but I have friends close by who wait patiently to take the excess off my hands when needed). I think I still have some peach ketchup and peach conserve and peach chutney from last year hiding in the back of the freezer…
Not too bad for a first attempt, but it took a lot longer than thirty minutes…
I may be risking my self esteem and confidence by exposing my retirement project aspirations so publicly, but perhaps doing so will lead to a few of the ones that have been relegated to the bottom of my priorities to rise a little higher and maybe even come to fruition (or at least get worked into an overall plan).
What you don’t see on my list is any project that resembles my previous paid work. I think I’ve led or participated in enough business meetings to last a lifetime, and I can’t think of any committee or classroom that can’t find a way to do its work without my involvement or input.
Planning vs. Prioritizing
You may have noticed that none of the items on my retirement projects list is particularly important in the great scheme of things beyond my own personal enjoyment or fulfillment. I’m not saving the world or anything. (Actually, I’d like to add volunteering to the list, but that will have to wait until I get back from the upcoming road trips. I do have some ideas about what I might do once I can commit to a more regular schedule.) I know that just making tangible progress on each item will lead to personal enrichment and joy as well as physical and emotional well-being, but let’s not kid ourselves; they also require a fair amount of time and effort to execute properly and achieve the result I seek. Given that none of us knows how much time we have to pursue the activities that lift our souls and feed our brains and bodies, I feel a sense of urgency to figure out how I’m going to advance all these projects before it’s too late.
This planner is still one of my favorites. After letting it languish for several months while I pursued other “foolproof” organizing methods, I bought myself an identical but new planner book, thinking I needed a fresh start. I have yet to take the plastic off and open it.
Just as I was while working a paying job, I am still on that eternal quest for the perfect organization system that will give my life both the structure I need to make progress on my various lists, and also the flexibility I crave. I have been through many such systems over the years, “tried and true” for those devotees who can’t live without them. I get excited when I come across one that I think will work for the long term, only to discover that if I use it for more than a few weeks I should consider that a resounding success.
I have also made the mistake of telling those around me of my latest “perfect system,” which then puts me in the position of having to admit defeat when they ask me how it’s going several months later. Lately I’ve noticed that when I extol the virtues of my latest organizing gimmick they simply smile and nod politely as I demonstrate the wonders of my color-coded system, or the ease of my latest electronic calendar or spreadsheet system (also color-coded, with so many colors that I couldn’t remember my color scheme and needed a key to remind myself what they all meant), or the variety of detail possible on my newest paper-based calendar and to-do list. They’ve stopped asking questions or exclaiming in awe at my cleverness, nor do they make inquiries weeks later anymore. Clearly they know where my latest time management gimmick is headed despite my initial hopeful enthusiasm.
At the end of each experiment, I inevitably return to my personal tried and true method of prioritizing and keeping track of what I’m doing: the haphazard, randomly written to-do list on scraps of paper. This “system” allows me to cross off each task as it gets completed and then throw the paper away, giving me great satisfaction of a job well done. As I toss each scrap into the wastebin I feel like I’ve accomplished something important even if the paper had only two or three tasks on it. While I do sometimes put items in order of priority, it doesn’t really matter if I mark something as #1, as I have no loyalty to the version of me who thought that item was so important. If the day and time approaches and I don’t feel like doing the task, my list of priorities goes right out the window when I either move an item to another time or day, or simply cross it off (whether I’ve done it or not), or just ignore it altogether. Since I’m retired, I have choices and no one expects anything from me except me, right?
The Virtues Of Keeping Track
I don’t know about you, but as I get older I don’t remember things the way I did before. In my early adult years I never needed a to-do list. My brain was pretty good at sorting through my various dates and accountabilities and making sure I got everything done. I did use lists, but mainly as a way to bring some order to my workload, not because I couldn’t remember what needed to be on the list to begin with. My calendar was in my head as well, and I could meet deadlines and show up for appointments (and court dates) whether I had written them down or not.
Then the inevitable happened, the moment when my misplaced confidence was simply not enough to overcome the realities of my busy life. I completely forgot that I had planned to attend a theater performance with a friend of mine. This particular friend had totally lost her vision to diabetes many years before I met her; she lived in a black world, alone and fairly isolated both physically and socially. We had formed a nice friendship that included my helping her get out of her house to run errands, go for walks and the like. She depended on my weekly visits for both the social and practical aspects, and I enjoyed them as well. The theater performance was important to her because she rarely attended evening events like this. She knew someone in the cast and was very much looking forward to the outing. Although this performance fell outside our usual scheduled get-togethers, we had talked about it for weeks and I knew that in addition to being her date, I was her only mode of transportation that night. Somehow my own life took over on the day of the performance, and the time to pick her up came and went. I didn’t remember it until around 1am, many hours after I stood her up. Just as I was drifting off into a sleepy stupor, something triggered my brain and I realized for the first time what I had done. I sat bolt upright in bed, mortified at my inexcusable gross negligence. I called her immediately to apologize (she was an habitual night owl), but there was really nothing to say and no do-over. I became one more in a long line of people who had let her down throughout her life. It took a long time to repair the damage, and our relationship was never quite the same. I eventually moved away and we lost touch, but even today, so many years later, I still have trouble granting myself grace for the pain I caused her.
I vowed never to let anything like that happen again, and changed my habits. No longer do I trust myself to remember any date or time without putting it into my Google calendar, with alarms and reminders firmly in place. While I still have memory blips (and not everything makes it into my calendar despite my best intentions), I can’t think of any that have been quite as costly as that one was for me and for my friend. Hard lesson learned that I’m not (and never was) as perfect as I liked to pretend.
What’s Next
My secret to weeding is to keep and manage all the invaders that are colorful and pretty, and only pull out the thistles, crabgrass and anything choking the peonies or drowning the daylilies. Hence the plethora of daisies you see here.
So now that I’ve managed to spend an inordinate amount of time musing and avoiding all of the items on my list save for item #5, (which won’t count as progress until I actually post this article), I think I’m ready to move on to figuring out where my fall road trip will be taking me and where I will be staying along the way. After that I’ll dive back into the Larson history and flesh out more of that story, which is time consuming but so, so engaging and fun for me.
And in between those two big activities I’ll fit in the banjo (DAILY!), crochet (not daily), peaches (when they arrive), drawing (eventually), walking (daily I hope), biking (when it isn’t too hot or too cold or too rainy or too cloudy or too sunny - yes, you guessed it, I’m a fair weather biker), spending time with friends (as often as they’ll put up with me), eating out (as often as my purse will allow), preparing for my son’s backyard birthday party (coming up soon, better get started!), weeding (when I can fit it in and it isn’t raining, or too hot, or too cold, or…), and generally enjoying the summer in Ann Arbor and wherever else I happen to be. And just for the record, I hereby declare that my spring cleaning project (see #8, above) is now officially my summer cleaning project, or maybe my fall or winter project - we’ll have to see what happens…
Enjoy your summer wherever you are, and happy father’s day to all the dads who might see this.
