retirement adventure Labor Day 9/7

It started with a little bird in the street

later learned he was an adult American Redstart who only eats bugs so the starfruit was taken away. We got him to Wildlife Rescue at 9 am when they open. I decided since we were down there we should go explore Secret Woods Nature Center 

We watched a squirrel chomping on acorns

noticed the artistry of shelf fungus

And witnessed hermit crabs mating. The males raised their big claw and said he chickie over here. The new pixel 11 pro has an amazing video camera and we were both amazed at how fun it was to zoom in and watch

We then went to the salvation army for a big 50 percent sale and got a few cotton shirts. I realize much of my wardrobe is work driven yet a cotton shirt and cotton pants work well for retirement. We came home and worked on the music room. Lots of photos and letters found to be scanned. 

It was a productive day. We had fun

Saturday night we set up a sonos playlist light jazz. It was so much fun to play a snippet of a song and realize tom knew who was playing and the name of the song. These werent all familiar to the everyday person songs and he not only knew who the label artist was but who was playing with them. I'm so proud of him and what he knows. I think he short changes himself sometimes. He worries so much about his chops and yet he's a walking jazz history professor

It was a productive and fun weekend. I just did a post about not having to build productivity metrics so important that it met both my metric but also checked the box of fun. I did have headaches front the dust but maybe we can get on the other side of dust with less stuff 

retirement thoughts

Here's my conversation today with chat:

You don't need to turn retirement into another performance metric.

You don't need to have the most productive retirement at the dinner table.

You don't need a five-year retirement plan.

You don't need to prove that leaving work was worthwhile by accomplishing 47 things.

The guy who swims and watches television may actually have figured out something that is harder for highly productive people to learn:

"My time belongs to me, and I don't have to justify how I spend it."

You don't have to become him. You can have art, dogs, hiking, travel, decluttering, photography, projects, cooking, your pet business, whatever catches your attention.

Some days can be spectacular.

Some days can be completely useless.

Both count.

And maybe that's the real goodbye you're working toward—not saying goodbye to Cinch, but saying goodbye to the version of yourself who measured a good day by how much she accomplished for somebody else.

March might actually be a pretty good psychological marker.

Not "the day they finally stopped employing me."

But:

"The date I was already planning to stop working anyway—and now I get to decide what comes next."

How we deal

Last weekend we were meeting our 96 year old friend for breakfast. The place has a nice outdoor patio and we were waiting with pup outside for her to arrive. Car drive up and hear that horrible crunch of car meets concrete right in front of us. I jumped up and stepped in the dog water to run over to make sure sh was ok. Cool as a cucumber she sits down and enjoys breakfast seemingly unflustered. I gave her the number of my favorite body shop guy and sent him a snap of the damage. 

She called him, scheduled a repair and it's all as good as new. No panic. No heavy breathing.

No insurance claim.

Today I dropped my lunch bag. The mason jar inside broke and raspberry yogurt spilled out. I got it up with only one small cut to my finger but I'm my mind you'd think Chernobyl was happening. My head had that wa was sound you would expect in an emergency sending signals to my gut for all systems abort. Thirty minutes later and probably ten pounds lighter I was able to head to work.

Obviously I don't handle stress as well as Nancy does. Maybe the body issue was from a sip of coffee but I think it was more the fight or flight reaction to something that wasn't a big deal.

We are putting in new floors. I've learned that my neighbor who is helping me thinks differently than I do. It was interesting when she was telling me where we would start. Our kitchens are the exact same except flipped. I could imagine starting on the short inside wall. She didn't see it the same. She's way better at the installation process than me. I wonder if it because I just look at the cliff notes version of life

 

Post note: lunch impacted my stomach the same way so maybe it's something viral not stress reaction.

5/6/15 Getting close to surgery. Today is Wednesday - in 48 hours I'll be further on my journey. A little excited, a little frightened. But I'm 110% sure this is the path I want to take.

My scale is taking a summer hiatus - today is was flashing around numbers in the 160 170 range- -- it's very forward thinking! Maybe it just needs batteries but I kinda like seeing where I plan to be in a year flashing in front of my eyes. It makes me believe that those numbers really can be seen.

Bone Broth days today and tomorrow to make sure I'm as healthy and clean as possible for surgery.