Another week has rolled by since we returned from our fishing trip. I’m becoming a slug. Without the scheduled hours of a job, I find I’m less organized, less compulsive, less achievement oriented. Instead, I’m more interested in cooking (Really!), reading, napping, and working out. I make a list each day, but not much from it gets done.
At book club this morning, a friend asked me how it felt to be among the unemployed. She had already made the adjustment from employee to retiree, but before I could respond we started discussing the book for this month.
Nevertheless, the question stayed with me: “How does it feel?”
It feels strange. I have worked almost all my life, as most people my age probably have. I’ve worked for corporations, non-profits, and as a self-employed consultant. I’ve worked full time, part-time, any time. But I’ve always had deadlines of one kind or another, a schedule to plan my personal life around, and a structure that prompted me to get things done in a timely manner. Now that’s gone.
That is, the outside imposition of a structure is gone. Instead, it’s up to me to determine what I want to do with my time and then do it. I am now my own boss.
This is the last weekend of the summer; where I live students don’t return to the classroom until the day after Labor Day. On Tuesday, the school bell will ring as they form lines on the playground and enter their classes to meet their teachers.
I feel like those students. I’m entering a new grade in my life, and I’m reminded of the poem by John Donne that ends: “Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.”
I must listen for that school bell.
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