Wednesday 30 January 2013

Too Busy to be Bored

One of the questions I was asked when I said I was retiring was “Won’t you be bored?” The answer at the time was a slightly cautious “No, I don’t think so…I hope not!” The answer now is a definite “No! I’m too busy to be bored!”

Sometimes I think retirees fall into one of two categories – those who are bored out of their brains, and either go back to work, or fall into a decline (sometimes, sadly, they die before they realise); and those who are busy enough that they think “how on earth did I fit going to work into my life?”
Luckily, I’m one of the busy ones. I can’t imagine going back to work. I did try it for a short time, as I was missing some of the things I got out of work, but I found that it interfered too much with my other activities. My coming out of retirement didn’t last all that long.

Let’s take yesterday as an example. After some chores in the morning (I don’t count these as part of my activities, as they are necessary whether you are retired or not), I finished the crochet part of a top that I’m making.
 
All I have to do now is weave in the ends, and it will be ready to wear. Mind you, I’m not ready to wear it, as it has turned out to be a bit small (I’m new to crochet, so didn’t properly work out what size I needed to make). Luckily I’m in the process of getting healthier, so losing weight is part of the plan anyway.

Once I’d done that, I got stuck into making a birthday card for a dear friend. I make pretty much all my own cards now – I enjoy making them and tend to collect bits and pieces of tools, equipment, paper, cardstock, decorations etc (some bought new, some acquired from people who no longer use them, some improvised from other things), so it’s not a cost saving exercise, by any means!
Then I thought I’d do my exercise for the day (as I said, I’m trying to get healthier). Since it was Tuesday, it was my Strength andFlexibility day (I do it every 2nd day), going along to the podcast from the UK National Health Service. It’s a good podcast to start out with (I need something to tell me what to do, otherwise I don’t work myself hard enough), but I’m going to try to find something a bit more challenging.



some shorts I made for when I'm doing my exercises
I’m also doing the C25K program, also using the NHS podcast. I do it every 2nd day also. I’m on Week 4, and have been for 2 weeks! I’m finding it quite challenging, so won’t be looking for a different podcast. There are a zillion podcasts for this program out there but the hard part is finding one that has music that I want to listen to (I’m not into that techno-crap).

So I get home from my exercise, and decide that I want to try to knit another dishcloth. I’ve already knitted a few, using the WaffleWeave pattern from Deb at Homespun Living, but wanted to expand my knitting repertoire, and saw her lovely Baby Fan Dishcloth pattern. If you haven’t cottoned on (pun intended) to homemade dishcloths yet, give them a go. They are lovely and soft, yet still clean the dishes really well. So easy to wash (throw them into the washing machine), so you don’t just throw them out like you would the ones you buy from the supermarket.

In between all that, I found time to do a couple of Sudoku (I have to keep my brain working!), catch up on my internet reading, research some books I want to get out of the library, annoy the cat (I have the scratches to prove it).
So, no, I’m not bored. In fact, the challenge is in choosing which of the many things I want to do that I’ll actually get to each day.

A truly joyful retirement!

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