Unstructured Hours

In the four months since I retired much has changed. As I recorded previously, my long commute to work and back has ended, demands on my time have ceased, my workstation at home is gone. The initial shock of no longer being employed seeped into my consciousness slowly enough that it felt more like gentle precipitation rather than the downpour it was. Upbeat by nature I focused on the bright side (and still do), but somewhere underneath it all the enormity of this change to my life/lifestyle has begun to emerge.

As David Ekerdt, a former professor of sociology and gerontology at the University of Kansas, wrote in a recent article in The Wall Street Journal,

"Preretirement, I wore the shield of being a Working Adult, albeit with gray hair. Dropping that shield, I face membership in a new life stage, one apart from and discontinuous with the decades before."

Work identity suspended (and only a few gray hairs) I thankfully retain some of my other selves. Besides the obvious mother, grandmother, friend, and neighbor, I’m an author, writer, and a quiltmaker. Interestingly, these identifiers have become a kind of refuge from my employment nakedness. Ekerdt continues,

"So I live with a puzzling ambiguity. The self-imposed pressure of work has lifted even as I feel guilty about loafing too much. For now, I have two angels perched on my opposite shoulders. One whispers in my ear, 'Relax!' The other asks, 'Shouldn’t you be doing something?'”

Learning to be comfortable with daily unstructured hours is not easy, at least for me who thrived on being a multitasker. I understand the ambivalence that comes with the pleasure of being able to relax and read a book in the middle of the day, and the uneasiness that lingers a heartbeat away from such indulgences. Especially since prior to my retirement I dutifully made a list of potential activities to keep me engaged in life and to stave off tumbling into the immobility and idleness suffered by so many seniors.

What I am learning, however, is that unstructured hours are a gift, not a penalty leading to inevitable emotional and physical decline. If anything, they're an invitation to being –allowing sweet reprieve from the distraction of always doing. There’s something restorative about letting time pass with no agenda, no purpose other than to rest, to think, or simply to listen to stillness. In doing so I always discover my faithful companion, joy, waiting for me.

I got up this morning without much to do and I hadn’t finished it by the time I went to bed. ~David Ekerdt, quoting his former boss.