Retirement Blues

Fog in the trees

January 30th, 2015

I like to say that being retired means that I have no one to answer to for the way I spend my time.  But of course, this isn't strictly speaking true.  Ultimately I have to answer to myself.  I set myself some goals, just to make sure I don't sit around all day and get nothing accomplished, but lately, all that seems to do is make me depressed.  For instance, I wanted to make sure I had something new to say every Tuesday and Friday in this blog.  That hasn't happened for a couple of weeks.  So I ask myself, if I don't really have anything to say, isn't it best just to shut up?

I promised myself that I would work on my photography every day, but even there I sometimes find that I'll take one more picture of the trees outside the house, just so I can say I kept my promise by clicking the shutter.  This isn't helping me learn anything new, nor is it improving my skills.  It's just one more set of pixels, or mega-pixels, on a memory card.

The Moon in late afternoon

January 29th, 2015

Finally, I said I would get back to weaving and do at least one project a month.  There's the makings of a lovely project on my main loom, but it's moving very slowly, and I'm having a hard time motivating myself to actually sit at the loom and work.  I know that once the loom is completely dressed and ready for me to weave, the weaving itself will go quickly and provide its own motivation.  But I'm not there yet.  Today, just so that I could say I had actually completed a project in January, I grabbed the first loom I ever had, and also some yarn.  I'm not particularly proud of the open weave mug rug I made, but hey, it's a weaving project, and it did give me a somewhat jaded sense of accomplishment.

My first loom

(As a child, I used sock yarn loops to make pot holders)

January 30th, 2015

The one thing I have been keeping up is my reading.  I set a goal to read seventy-five books in 2015, and so far I've completed twelve.   That means that I'm almost a whole month ahead of myself.  But reading has always been my first love.  I have no doubt that I'll easily read seventy-five books this year, so I've added a challenge to myself, one suggested by my dear friend Vaun Stevens.  I'm doing the Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge, so at least twenty-four of those books won't be the light and frivolous mysteries I can read in one day.  One of the suggested challenges is to read a book of poetry, so at present I'm reading Guillaume Appolinaire's Alcools which collection contains my all-time favorite poem, Le Pont Mirabeau.  I should finish the collection on or before February 1st, then it will be on to something else.  Who knows what just yet.

Green wool mug rug being taken off the loom

January 30th, 2015

But I know I have to stop being so hard on myself.  Just go with the flow and what gets done, gets done.  What doesn't, doesn't matter.  There's always tomorrow--at least until there isn't.  And tonight!  Ah, tonight!  I'm going to the Llano Theater to see Into the Woods with Meryl Streep as the witch and Johnny Depp as the Wolf.  (After all, all good fairy tales take you into the woods where you usually have to deal with either a witch or a wolf, right?)

The completed mug rug

January 30th, 2015