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Summer Tasks

Summer Tasks

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Here it still feels like full-on summer, but with autumn officially beginning next week there’s more urgency to complete the tasks of summer — everything from weeding the garden to bathing the dog, a task that may happen later today, depending upon energy levels of both dog and humans.

Perhaps I should say tasks made easier by summer in the latter case, actions more easily performed outside that in, like the sudsing up and rinsing off of a sometimes cantankerous canine, or the cleaning of a feather- and seed-layered birdcage.

On the other hand, it’s also nice to read, write and think outside, to look and listen and remember, storing up the cricket sounds and bird calls for a leaner, bleaker season. Those activities should not — and will not — be forgotten. 

Labor Day?

Labor Day?

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It’s my first Labor Day without a paid, full-time job to return to the next day. Does it feel different? Strangely enough, not much. I’ve known for a long time that what drives me is more internal than external. 

So there will be no 8 a.m. start time, no Tuesday 1 p.m. meeting — but there will be a to-do list — reading to finish, a class to attend, an appointment. And then there are the everyday tasks, the ones I don’t have to list: writing, walking, posting here. 

It has me thinking — what is labor, anyway?  And what is leisure? 

“Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do,” said Mark Twain. 

But sometimes a body enjoys what it is obliged to do so much that it doesn’t seem like work. And now that my working life has changed, I realize that to make it full and rich I must insert tasks that I’m not obliged— and am maybe even afraid — to do. Is that labor? Is it leisure? 

On this sunny Labor Day, with a light breeze rifling the papers on my outside “desk” (the glass-topped table) … I say, who cares? 

Tuesday Already?

Tuesday Already?

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I’m only two months into this new phase of life, taking a measure of its contours, trying to figure out if time will pass more quickly now that I have a slightly less crammed-full schedule or if it will slow down instead. 

I’m hoping for the latter. Which is a good sign, I guess. One wouldn’t want to slow time down if time were hanging too heavily on one’s hands.

But what if the opposite is true? What if the days and weeks are still winging by? What if the chunks of free time are still not roomy enough? Am I being greedy? Am I asking for the impossible? After all, I’m not 11 years old and on summer vacation. 

Patience, I tell myself. The long afternoons are on their way. Just not yet. 

ISO Open Days

ISO Open Days

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For someone recently retired I haven’t exactly been twiddling my thumbs. I didn’t intend to be idle but I did expect to experience brief periods of thumb-twiddling, cloud-gazing or even some good old-fashioned afternoon ennui.

Nothing of the sort has happened. 

In part, this is because — in what seemed smart planning at the start but I now realize was the exact opposite — I spread out long-overdue appointments and errands so that no day was too full. As a result, there have been almost no days that are open enough for cloud-gazing or thumb-twiddling.

Even a planned business phone call can bisect a day, can puncture its purposelessness. This from a person who used to pride herself on how many to-dos she could pack into 24 hours. 

Lo, how the mighty have fallen.

(I borrowed this meme from a Jeff Speck newsletter.)

 

Once More to Metro

Once More to Metro

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Yesterday I went to D.C. via Metro, a trip I used to make most mornings but which I had not made since March 12, 2020.  That’s 15 months … a fact that even now I can’t quite absorb.

The parking garage was almost deserted at 2:30 p.m., likewise the platform and the train itself. I did quickly realize, however, that one of the other two souls on my car seemed to be psychotic, so at the first stop I moved to the next car.  That’s my Metro! 

Otherwise, though, the old system was gussied up and spit-polished, with new announcement boards and shelters and someone cleaning the elevator in the middle of the afternoon. 

I rode three lines, the Orange, Red and Silver. I read the newspaper, as I used to do, and noticed the changing scenery out the window. 

It was almost like old times … except there were almost no people riding with me. 

Shared Purpose

Shared Purpose

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It’s a rainy day, the kind of day when I used to like being at the office, once I was there. A coziness descended upon us, an enforced calm, or at least I felt it. At no time was it clearer to me that we were all in this together than in foul weather.

It was then that I thought of us as many parts of one body: the program officers and scientists and accountants and writers and procurement folks and so many others, all bringing their talents to the cause.

I’m remembering that feeling today, one of shared purpose. It’s a feeling I don’t want to give up, even as I embrace the freedom of my new state.

Weightless

Weightless

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I knew that the last day of full-time employment would be a humdinger because it was the one that required technical tasks — and in that I was not mistaken. But as is so often true in life, it unfolded in a way I didn’t expect.

It wasn’t the “wiping” of the computer, the backup and removal of files, that had me flummoxed. I had been going about that fairly steadily for days. What held me hostage almost to the end was … the cloud: disentangling my work machine from iMessage and iPhoto and iTunes and all the other i’s that seek to unify our lives and terrorize us in the process. Because don’t you know that if you remove photos when you are signed into iCloud you will delete them from “all your devices.” And when you have more than 17,000 images (yes, dear reader, I am embarrassed to admit that is how many I have), which include the precious first photographs of your sweet grandchildren, even the thought of removal is enough to paralyze one for hours. 

Only I didn’t have hours — I had minutes, which were quickly ticking away. Luckily, an Apple Support person talked me down from the ledge, and after 30 minutes on the phone with her, and an hour of two of agony before and after, I was ready for the drive to Crystal City. 

There was a moment yesterday after I had solved these problems, after I had dropped off my computer, monitor and other work gear in a new and near empty office, when I had started driving home along the river, a drive I hadn’t taken in almost a year, when I felt positively weightless. And that’s what I’ll remember. 

Almost Bedtime

Almost Bedtime

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It’s almost bedtime here on the second-to-last day of full-time employment. Perhaps I won’t have bedtimes in this new life. I’ll live so freely that I’ll be beyond diurnal schedules. 

But I doubt it. I imagine I’ll wake up pretty much the same time as I always do. And, truth to tell, I’ll be doing much the same sort of things, too — writing, walking, reading. 

It might sound boring to many, but oh my, not to me!

The Annual Reports

The Annual Reports

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My desk accessories and headset are in the car. The monitor is parked in the basement, ready to go. I’ll wipe my computer on Friday and take it into the office, too. Then all that remains will be … the annual reports. They were in the car, stationed for return along with the stapler and the tiered folder rack, but I had to bring them back inside because I needed to research a scholarship that began in 1993.

Now that they’re back in the house (and a heavy load they are, too!), I don’t want to let them go. I’ve built a complete set, you see, from 1985 to the present, which ranges from the time when Tom worked for Winrock to the time that I do. It’s a history of the place in a nutshell, a place I first experienced when I moved from Manhattan to a mountaintop in Arkansas right after we married and which has enriched my own career and life experiences beyond measure. 

So I asked Tom last night: “Do you think it’s a bad sign that I can’t let go of the annual reports?” He just smiled and said to do whatever I think is right. He can’t really quibble about my packrat tendencies since he’s a primo packrat himself, and he knows this is about more than being a packrat. It’s about loving an organization I’m about to leave. 

I do love Winrock. And yet on Friday I’ll type my last words for them and sign off the network for the last time. Because there’s something I love more, which is the freedom to write what I want when I want. It’s an awesome and a terrifying freedom, but I’ve earned the chance to try it, so I will. 

As for the annual reports, they’re sitting in the hallway. I’m still thinking about them.

A Whirl

A Whirl

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The last few days of paid employment are flying away like paper pages from a calendar in an old movie, the gimmick directors used to show time passing. Which is to say quickly.

But that’s now. A few months ago time was hanging around my ankles. I kept paging forward in my desk diary, looking at the day I had appointed for notifying management of my decision — it seemed as if it would never arrive. 

So in a way, my experience of time recently has mirrored its journey through our lives: the languid days of childhood, the accelerando of adulthood, the spin-crazy way the pace picks up as we age.

By that reckoning, next week will be quite a whirl.