Adrift

More angst.  It's not out of my system yet.  Give me a little more time, I think.

Two weeks since I retired and I'm still floating along getting nothing done.  I seem to have caught up on my sleep and am sleeping longer at night; thus not more than one daytime nap is needed now.  I still function best after 4 p.m., my old quitting time.  These days I feel good if I accomplish one thing per day on my to do list.

I've come to realize that a job is an anchor in our lives.  It holds us down and stops us from doing a lot of things we imagine we'd rather be doing.  But there's predictability and security in that anchor.  And there's a certain Stockholm-syndrome-comfort in that.  Once we let loose of that anchor, it sets us off balance.  No-one is telling us what to do.  Every minute of the day is filled with something of our choosing.  And sometimes that's nothing.

It's a huge luxury of time I've never before experienced.  Clearly, it does not matter whether I vacuum today or wait until tomorrow.  And with no more pressing time schedules, I am drifting along, sitting on the couch, playing on the internet, watching TV, eating, and wasting a lot of time.

And maybe I need to do that for a bit.  I'm certainly giving myself a break with this.  But I don't want this to continue.  I'll be bored out of my mind and I'll become huge.  Well, I think I'm becoming both of those.

I blame the weather partly.  It's been a long time since we had such an ugly January with extended sub-freezing temps and the inversion that traps the smog in the valley.   Not to mention the short days.  I know this part will change and I believe I'll wake up more when it does.

And I realize I'm coming off an apparently stressful period.  About six weeks before retirement, when I started training my replacements, my old eye twitch showed up.  I hadn't had that since my previous highly stressful job.  I still have a bit of that twitch a couple of times a day.  I think I've failed to acknowledge how stressful the past few months have been in so many ways.  Another reason to give myself a break.

I've decided to think of this as the first two-week vacation I've had in probably 20 years or more.  Really.  I hadn't thought of it that way before, but my vacations have been snippets for many years.  So now I've had a good long rest from all kinds of work.  But I'm feeling the need to return "home" metaphorically, wherever that may be now.

(And gawd I hope I get over all this angst soon.)