The art of being retired.

Here am I at last. I now can do whatever I want, be whoever I choose to be. I retired on April 1.  I immediately set out to get sick in any way I could - diverticulosis, stroke number five, and my back as bad as it's been in years.  So whatever I wanted was sleep, sleep, sleep.  I slept and watched a lot of movies and binge watched a lot of TV - cable shows mostly that I was able to find online after some searching.

But gradually I started to wake up and now I'm working on acquiring the habits I want to have in my retirement.  One is exercise - which I do at Aquacare, a physical therapy heated pool.  It is closed whenever there is lightening which is unfortunate with the weather we've had recently (thank you, CO2). Along with that is writing. I'm using some writing exercise books that I bought a few years ago and am only just now putting to use. After getting those two in my consciouness, I've added a daily period of decluttering (just started, not yet a habit). Exercise had to be a prerequisite because physical pain made writing and decluttering quite difficult.

PS This afternoon I was reading http://www.brainpickings.org ... a great resource on writing ... and it seems that many writers put exercise (including swimming) into their daily routines. Good to know!

Morning gratitude

I really don't feel all that grateful this morning.  I had even forgotten that I intended to. I'm just feeling the general confusion of the morning of an unstructured day. I thought I do just one thing on the computer this morning before going back to sleep, but found myself again wandering around in cyberspace until I didn't feel like sleeping anymore. 

Fortunately my email had a blog comment to moderate and that reminded me of what I wrote yesterday. So that's gratitude number one. And having an unstructured day is gratitude number two. Which leads to me a thought of house cleaning so I won't be embarrassed when Ed comes to pick up my exercise bike to add to the school gym - so I'm grateful to have a coworker as pleasant and quietly witty as Ed ("I don't think anyone can describe me as 'rousing'"). And grateful that Bob hauled up my laundry bags yesterday and played my piano while he waited for his wife and didn't even look at the mess. And glad I can go swimming instead of using the exercise bike which I use as a clothes rack to dry my swim clothes. I'm starting to lose count now.

Exercise

I'm told that exercise is an important way to pull out of depression. The catch is that it's hard to get started exercising when I'm depressed. Last week I think I went to the pool once. Today I went. Like pulling my own teeth. But, of course, once I was in the water, I was committed and active. One lady who I exercise with often is a gym teacher, so I bounced ideas off her. She reminded me that I had a stationary bike at home. And I actually don't need to dry clothes on it all the time.