Tasks in hand

I don’t want to be a retirement bore, perhaps that ship has already sailed, yet I want to capture the little differences that are happening to me as I pull away from the shoreline of work. Two things have stood out for me so far. 

The first is one that everyone who has retired will tell you, which is that you have no idea  what day it is. Every morning now, when I wake up, I lie in bed for a while to work it out, usually by trying to remember what day it was yesterday. The school summer holidays have made things worse in that we have very little sense of routine. All days can be the same, except at the weekends when the shops and visitor attractions are busier. The days are easy to fill, just confusing.

The second is more work related, a hangover from over forty years of deadlines. Once I have worked out what day it is, I find I still have an overwhelming feeling that I have things which I must get on with. Just like on a work day,  there is a list of tasks to be addressed and my mind immediately turns to what it is that I need to do. Even though I have all day to get on with such things, many of which aren’t really time bound, I still feel a sense of urgency. 

At work, things were bound to turn up and I was perpetually trying to get ahead, just in case. In the end I found myself doing tomorrow’s work today and the next day’s work the day after. However hard I tried I could never get to the end. My wife summed it up beautifully when she said that all the gadgets we have are just trying to cheat time. We speed up in order to get ahead yet so does everyone else and we find ourselves back where we started..

My infamous spreadsheet helped, in that it was clear what was required, what was less urgent and what could wait. On reflection, it may have hindered my transition from work as it made me too efficient if not effective. I am still using it though the number of tasks gets smaller and smaller. There are some things to do to wrap up the company and then I can think whether I still need it.

How long will these feelings last? Probably until my spreadsheet is redundant. Hopefully, not long now!