An Ordinary Day

When we stand on the edge of retirement and gaze over the precipice, some of us get a little dizzy. Several questions loom large. Here’s one I’m still chewing over: How will I spend my ordinary days?

I retired because I wanted time to travel and visit the grandchildren. I wanted to slow down and give more time to follow my interests where they lead. But even before I retired, I could see that retiring from a full-time job was going to open up a lot of time: not just the hours actually spent at work, but also the hours getting ready for work, commuting to and from work, talking over with my husband the latest crisis with a student or the most ridiculous thing said in a meeting that day. Not to mention late-night worries about a fragile colleague, a fumbling boss, or job security.

All that time suddenly opening up – it’s liberating. It’s also a little intimidating.

Some people can scale back at work if they choose: they work fewer days a week or fewer hours in a day. But most people’s jobs aren’t structured like that. Mine wasn’t. I taught high school English, and one spring, at the end of one academic year, classes were over, and so was my job. I chose to retire, for good reasons; I was well prepared for it financially; I had exciting plans for the next six months; yada yada yada. But.

But what was my schedule going to be like on an ordinary day of an ordinary week? Or was I even going to have a schedule? Why? Why not be free? Why not follow my inclinations and play it by ear?

So I tried that. What I discovered was that 1) I love slow mornings, and 2) my phone sings with the voice of the sirens. I sometimes disappeared down into the world of email and Facebook like Alice down the rabbit hole. When I surfaced, I’d caught up on the political scene, seen some cute videos of elephants, “liked” a lot of photos from friends, and skimmed my eyes reluctantly over many ads for products I didn’t need. It was 11:00 a.m., and I was still in my pajamas.

I would rouse myself and take a walk. Later, I would grab something light for lunch, do some laundry, run some errands. (There are always plenty of errands.) In the late afternoon, I would often wind up on the couch, reading. And then it was time to think about what to make for dinner.

After years of being on a tight schedule, this lackadaisical life had its pleasures for a few weeks. And for some people, this non-scheduley schedule works fine even in the long-term. I wasn’t isolated, or bored, or unhappy. I saw my friends, went to movies, lumped around my pleasant house with my delightful spouse. And I do believe it’s okay, after years of demanding work, to chill.But I wasn’t exactly happy, either. I didn’t feel invigorated, energized, or lively.

Since I play around with writing, and since writers have always confronted the challenge of structuring their own time, I consulted one of my old favorites. In The Writing Life, Annie Dillard wrote this:

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.”

That’s a lovely set of metaphors for what a schedule does for us. It’s fake in some ways, but it’s also a net, a scaffolding, a lifeboat. It works for my husband, who is happiest when he writes almost every morning, regularly, and exercises every afternoon, regularly.

And yet.

And yet I found myself resisting the idea of a schedule. So instead, I tried listing the activities I wanted in every day. (Well, not every day. Just most days. Maybe five days out of seven?) It wouldn’t be a schedule, exactly, just a list of activities that keep me sane, happy, and interested in life. Here’s what I came up with:

     Some exercise and stretching.
     Some writing, about anything.
     Some quiet and thoughtful activity.
     Some useful household task.
     Something fun (by my own standards).
     Something in relation to nature and the landscape.
     Something that connects me to other people socially.
     Something challenging.
     Something future-oriented.

It looked manageable. After all, walking with a friend could knock off the exercise, fun, and something social in one neat package. If we walked through the woods, I could also check off nature.

I didn’t need the checklist for long. By a week in, I had it internalized. What turned out to be the most useful was the reminder to do something challenging every day.

It works even better if I set myself a modest wake-up routine: an hour for coffee and a news/email/Facebook check, followed (in the fall or winter) by at least half an hour under the full-spectrum lamp. During that half-hour or so, I journal and roughly schedule the rest of the day. On many days, I head to the coffee shop around 9 a.m. – except for the days when I throw the whole thing out the window, sink happily into a comfy chair, and read.

Even on days when I read for a lot of the day, the new system has solved the problem of the addictive phone. And in a couple of weeks I start a couple of non-credit classes, which I’m hoping will solve the “light up my brain” problem.

The classes, some friends tell me, will also solve most of my issues around a schedule. With exercise classes some days and educational classes other days, the week gets organized. Individual days, then, get organized around those weekly commitments. Maybe it works like that. I guess we’ll see.

So — what is (or isn’t) working for you?