MISERY GUTS

For someone who gets a cold about once every five years, I’m bemoaning the fact I’m suffering my second bout of flu in five months. I’ll spare you the details, you can go way back to the first few entries in this blog to find out just how I feel. Came home early from work on Wednesday and have limped through the past couple of days at home with my greatest achievement being the making of a big pot of soup this morning so I can devour it over the next few days instead of bothering to cook anything.

When you work full time you have this idyllic dream of what you’d like to achieve at home if you had the time, but when you confine yourself to home base so as not to infect your work mates, you have a tendency to stare at the walls and wonder what you’re supposed to do with yourself all day. Being crook doesn’t help, and probably doesn’t count really, seeing as what little strength you have is all used up by the time you’ve made lunch, curled up on the couch and used your powers of decision making to the max in choosing which DVD you’ve seen the least number of times that you could sit through again.

With the intention of pulling back from full time work at the end of this year and working part time, I can see the value in careful planning. It’s always encouraged for those heading into retirement, as going from a scheduled daily routine into a future of no specific routine which could last anything up to another thirty years or more can suddenly throw you into a nebulous world of neverending nothingness.

Now, all my friends who have launched into that time of their life are so busy they’re not sure how they ever found time to go to work. They’re obviously the smart ones, and they’re not indulging in simply furnishing their lives with more comfort and relaxation. They’re out there in the community, sleeves rolled up and getting stuck into projects which have the ability to enrich the lives of those who are often the most vulnerable within our society.

Retirement is certainly not on the top of my list at this point, not ready to jump off the treadmill quite yet. A nice break would be fine but I’m sure after a couple of weeks I’d be looking around for something a bit more challenging to do than pulling out the weeds and cleaning the windows which haven’t been done for about ten years.

No matter what stage of life we’re in, at the start of our careers or near the end, starting a family or seeing our children start theirs, being a leader in our chosen field or a loyal support worker in the background, we all want our lives to be productive and mean something. Not just for ourselves, but the knowledge we’ve somehow made a difference to the lives of those around us, no matter how big or small, is reward in itself.