Rant #2,512: Relax

Too much time on my hands …

 
No, I am never going to admit to that, although not having to go to work each weekday has freed up my time a bit.
 
But I am quite busy at times.
 
I do have my at-home job, which has taken up a lot of my time.
 
Although I am on contract and it is all remote, it does take up a bit of my time, which is good, but as with jobs like this, there isn’t a steady flow of things to do, you basically do what you can when the work comes in.
 
And I am busy trying to help my son find a job, which is not a pleasant task at all, but as his father, and in his situation, I can’t sit idly by and do nothing.
 
I have other things to do around the house—during the past year, I have become pretty adept at doing laundry and occasionally making dinner—and I am always running around outside the house to the supermarket, to the bank, and to the gas station, but what a difference a year makes!
 
And as I approach my full retirement on October 28—that is when I am supposed to receive my very first Social Security payment—I don’t really feel retired, never asked for it to come so early in my life, but here I am, a retired person at 63 and a half years of age.
 
So how do I fill in the blanks during the day, when I don’t have any work to do with my job, when everything is done in the house, when I have done all I could do to help my son out?
 
I watch television.
 
I have watched all the classics during my time at home, and when I say “classics,” I mean classic TV sitcoms, such as “Leave It To Beaver,” “Father Knows Best,” “Dennis the Menace,” “That Girl” and the like, I guess these shows bring comfort to me in a funny sort of way, a paean to a different time in my life and our collective lives.
 
The afternoons can be brutal, as those shows basically run in the morning. I do watch some news, “The People’s Court”—as I have documented previously, I just love Judge Marilyn Milian—and some sports when there is something on that I really want to watch, but basically, I use the afternoons to chill out from a sometimes busy morning, sometimes not.
 
I have learned to pace myself after more than a year away from the workplace, and even in the situation that I am in now, pacing is important.
 
Yesterday was the perfect example of how my day can go.
 
I did what I had to do in the earlier part of the morning—write this column, do some things in the house—and then I decided to go to Walmart to buy myself some new pants. I have a big hole in one of my pants legs, and even though I love to wear those pants, it was time for a change.
 
I ended up buying two pairs of pants—the first pants I have ever bought on my own in my entire life by myself, as my mother or my wife has always bought me my pants—and I came home, made some calls for my son—and by then, it was lunchtime.
 
I had lunch, and then I retired to the bedroom, where I watched TV for a few hours.
 
At about 3 p.m., some work came in for me to do, and it took about an hour to complete that task, and I then went back to TV. My son was up, and a little later, I made dinner for the two of us, as my wife had a dental appointment after work and would be home late. She didn’t want me to put anything up for her for dinner, so it was just myself and my son.
 
Work comes and goes. Last Thursday, I worked for several hours on an interview I did with somebody important in the world that I cover, military stores. I sent it to him for review, and he said I would get it back today, so if that holds true, I will have plenty to do this afternoon in gussying it up and making it presentable for readers.
 
Maybe some other things will come in, but that is pretty much how I spend my day.
 
If time permits, I do watch a movie here and there—thank goodness for Google Chromecast, the best $35 I ever spent, which allows me to cast movies and other video to my TV—and away I go.
 
Funny, I was going to talk about one of those movies today, but once I got into writing about how my days are going now that I am retired, I couldn’t stop writing, so that review will have to hold for another day.
 
The bottom line is this: I would much rather be at work, I really and truly would.
 
But if this is what my fate is, then I have to make the best of it, and that is what I have been trying to do for the past year, since October 10, 2019.
 
The refrain “woe is me” has not really been in my vocabulary, although you can be I have thought that from time to time.
 
Frankly, I have too many things to do to get down on myself at this point in time, and if I have to be retired, then I am going to enjoy myself while doing so.
 
And yes, work is often fun, believe it or not.
 
“Idle hands are the devil’s playground” … my hands are often as busy as can be …
And I am happy for that … you don’t know how happy I am!