My days since retirement have been very relaxed. I don’t fret too much about what I do or do not do, I enjoy an afternoon nap most days, and I wake up around 8:00 am if I feel like it. I rarely feel rushed. “Mañana” is my favourite word.
But I think I have recently hit a new peak of ‘doing nothing’ behaviour. For the past week or so I’ve spent the bulk of the sunny spring days we’ve had sitting on our deck. Sometimes I feel bad about this, considering it ‘wasted’ time, but I think I need to start thinking of it as time well spent.
It has been an… interesting? … year so far. What is going on to the south of us here in Canada is beyond weird- every day makes me feel more and more like I’m living in the world portrayed in the movie Idiocracy. Coming off an end of 2024 that saw the passing of two of our loved ones, it has been a bit much.
But February and March have also been a couple of months wherein my wife and I started to think about fun things we want to have and do in our retirement. We have plans! And some of those plans are actually in progress!
I am fussy about my vision. I’ve been wearing glasses ‘full time’ since I was about 12 years old. I have weird eyes and if my glasses aren’t ‘just’ right I get headaches. Well, more headaches than usual.
The local optometrists in Castlegar, Trail, and Nelson don’t have the model of lenses (Zeiss ‘Smartlife’ progressives) that I’ve found work best for me. Measuring for these requires special equipment and training.
So I drove yesterday to Kelowna to get my eye exam and prescription and order my new lenses. That’s an eight hour round trip, and I’ll have to do it again in a couple of weeks when the glasses are ready for fitting. That probably seems a bit excessive, but…
Irene and I had our usual quiet Christmas, short a few decorations. We did put up a tree, and I made a turkey dinner for Christmas day- but other than that it was just quiet times together for us. That’s perfectly fine and more or less normal, but both of us are struggling with emotions which casts a shadow on things.
I’m starting to think about what comes next, and that includes thinking about the upcoming year in general. I looked back through my blog and found that, as far as I can determine, I have only given ‘New Year’ predictions once since I started writing here. Back in 2007 I prognosticated about what 2008 would bring and, skimming through that post, I think my guesses were largely correct. I was even right about Google, shares of which dropped about 50% during 2008- but over the longer term I was very wrong on that one.
Predictions for 2025 might be fun: I see that Wilhelm over on The Ancient Gaming Noob has been doing this kind of thing consistently for quite a few years. I don’t have any intent to reach that level of ludicrous detail, but maybe I can make this into an annual tradition of my own. Certainly I should be able to do better than once every 17 years.
Life does not organize itself for our convenience or happiness. The past seven days have delivered two losses that have left my wife and I bereft.
Irene’s Mum, Celina, died on Thursday, November 28 after a brief stay in the ICU at Trail Hospital. My sister Judy passed on Tuesday, December 3 in the Agassiz Senior’s Community after a short couple of months of extreme decline from rapidly progressive dementia.
I’m trying to figure out how to deal with these events, bumbling my way through being supportive of other family members, and generally feeling quite lost and rather irrelevant.
I did some driving over the past few days for some family-related reasons. It was about 1,300 km in total through mountain passes in the winter, but I was fortunate that the weather made the drive fairly easy.
I did something during the drive that I haven’t done in several years: I listened to music. I’m not some sort of weirdo who hates music or something, but the way I like to listen isn’t really compatible with my normal life. I like to play music fairly loud, and Mrs. Ubergeek (Irene) is not fond of my preferred volume. She also, to be honest, isn’t a fan of the same music I like.
I used to listen to music while commuting for work, but I’ve been either remote working or retired for well over five years now. And I kind of forgot to listen the last couple of times I drove a significant distance by myself- but not this time. I played my weird collection of music on shuffle for a total of about twelve hours during the sessions of driving this week. I even made a mental note of the artists from my collection I listened to.
I’ve been trying to restart my aborted ‘go for a walk each day’ habit. I could not say I have been successful: I’ve managed two days in a row, and feel like that’s plenty of walking for the rest of the year.
The walks are lovely despite my quickly fading interest in my physical health. We are having our first ‘real’ snow of the season at the moment: it started falling early this morning before I woke up, and I’d wager it will still be falling when the sun sets in a few hours. It makes the world look strange and freshly-born, and with an accumulation of perhaps 8 centimetres so far it does nothing to make the walk any harder.
I probably couldn’t have picked a worse time to start this, though. The next four years of craziness and likely despair across our Southern border are going to be challenging to set aside each morning. But I am making the attempt, and finding it is a helpful habit to work on.
It is Thanksgiving here in Canada this weekend. I really don’t think much about this holiday: Irene asked if we were making a special meal, and we agreed to order pizza later and save the big dinner thing for Christmas.
But I do often think about being grateful for what I have. I haven’t made a commitment yet to practicing daily gratitude or anything quite so progressive, but I do feel that making an effort to account for the benefits I receive in life is worth while. In that vein, here are a few things I’m grateful for at this point in 2024.
Emily of Monsterlady’s Diary posted recently about what she might do if she had a million dollars to give away and it focused on making sure her family and herself could own their own homes. I have thought about this very issue quite a bit as I’ve aged, and pondered it some more this morning sitting on my deck with Finn and my coffee.
I think that one of the things that would bring me comfort as I ‘age out’ of society would be knowing that the generations following mine could have a fair chance to own a home. I think that is a bit of stretch given current conditions. But there are some things I’ll be watching for before my ashes are put in a jar somewhere.
