Third Anniversary and Another Change

The short version: whoohoo! Three years of retirement already.

Three years ago on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend I moved the last boxes out of my office, and the following Tuesday the first thing I did was to check online to make sure the retirement incentive had been deposited.

It had.

I was free.

I was buoyant in ways I had not expected. A fried was right: when you do what your parents expect; as an adult, you do what your workplace requires, and in retirement (if the Fates allow, anyway), you do whatever the hell you want.

Although I may be overstating things, most days I feel more centered than I ever have. I do on some occasions miss some of the people I used to work with, but, truth be told, although I am on the far end of campus and in the pool twice a week,  I don't visit any of the places I used to go. I go in the door to the gym that is the farthest from any place I ever worked. That said, though,  I do still enjoy, in a one-time-removed kind of way, a good rumor about the place every once in a while. And I still have the doll (if that is what she is called) a colleague made of me (and of all the members of her academic department) from a good ten to fifteen years ago, and she--a version of me--is at the top of  this page).

On the whole, though: not my circus, not my monkeys.

I no longer insist on staying in bed until at least eight  in the morning in part because for decades I got up around six. I can get up whenever I want to. I can read (and write) anything I want (no memos, very little work-related email).

Most importantly--and I know how lucky I am to be able to say all this--as far as I am concerned, the brain cells I thought were gone because of work stress and meetings, gone from spontaneous combustion or for whatever other reason, seem to have regenerated. Or at least that is how things have felt for a while in the New World of No Stress from Work. I like to think this is true.

What I choose to do with my time organizes my time. Yes, I still make lists as I always have, and some days I am more productive than others; there are things to be said for ignoring most of the items on the list and sitting and reading on the back deck. Celebration takes lots of forms.

To celebrate this anniversary, this blog is going to take a detour--for how long I do not know. But for at least the next few weeks (and perhaps much longer), this blog's much more frequent postings will consist of photos and prose, mostly about my almost-twenty years visiting and traveling in Vietnam.

Come along with me.

Copyright 2018
Sandra Engel