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."