I'm Kind Of Getting Used To This...

The beginning of week three of my retirement, and the sky shows no signs (yet) of falling in. I've still not launched fully in to the big list of retirement activities, as we are shortly disappearing off to China for three weeks to visit our daughter who works in Suzhou and I didn't want to start anything that would then need to go on hold.

However, I can add the following to the list of "things I've noticed" that I put in my last blog. When I was at work, my day was governed in half hours - half hour for a conference call, half hour for a meeting, half hour to prepare for a presentation etc. Each day was a patchwork of 30 minute blocks of time. Now - boy, is it different! I'm measuring time in days ("I need/want to get this or that done today" rather than "I need/want to get this or that done in the next 30 minutes"). The sense of freedom is quite liberating (and a bit scary), but it feels, with each passing day, that this is how life should be rather than the harum-scarum existence I had previously been used to.

See you in three weeks when we return from foreign climes.....

Early Days

So - the fuss and celebrations are all behind me now, and I've completed my first week as an officially retired person. Does it feel any different - not yet (still seems a bit like a holiday), and I'm in a bit of a hiatus as, in a bit over a week's time, we're off to China for three weeks to visit our daughter, so I've been loathe to launch myself in to any of the "what I will do when I retire" list until we return.

However, I have noticed a few significant changes (apart from the lack of an alarm clock going off at stupid o'clock every weekday):-

• My head is no longer full of that constant work-related chatter (must remember to send off that email; what should I do about that contract negotiation; where can I get hold of a specialist in asset management etc.), and consequently, I find that I can think a lot more clearly - and (heaven forfend!) I'm actually paying attention to everything that Jacqui says.
• That Sunday evening "it's work tomorrow - I need to mentally gird my loins for the upcoming chaos and madness" feeling has gone. Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed my work, but I used to have to wind myself up ready for the working week, which meant my mind went to another place from late Sunday afternoon onwards.
• My do list has shrunk dramatically - it may be blindingly obvious (duh!) but I've now got way more time than I thought possible to do all those things that I'll get around to some time - not only that, but I have the time to do them properly, rather than rushing to fit it all in to a weekend.

Early days yet, but I think I may well get used to this more quickly than I thought. And do I miss work? At the moment, not one single bit........

And to close off, number one in an occasional series of "What I've Been Reading/Watching/Listening To":-

What I've Been Reading
The mighty David Hepworth has just published "1971 - Never A Dull Moment", which holds the premise that, following the break up of the Beatles in December 1970, the following year marked a sea-change in rock music and contained more ground-breaking, seminal and just extraordinarily fine music than any other year. Whether he's right or whether he's wrong, it is (as you would expect) a more than entertaining read - and having listened to chunks of the accompanying Spotify playlist, he's got a more than valid point.

What I've Been Watching
We seem to be going through a bit of a purple patch with TV drama, but I 'd just like to commend two things - a piece of Scandi-noir - "Follow The Money" - which has been keeping us gripped, and the homegrown "Line of Duty", which is now on series 3 and is showing no signs of ageing - in fact, by tying the plotline from series 2 into series 3, it has leapt up the "must watch" scale. Also worthy of a mention is The Big Short - I've read many books about the 2008 financial crash (and the rampant greed, idiocy, arrogance and incompetence that accompanied it) and so I'm pretty well versed in a lot of what went wrong and why (basically, it was all down the aforementioned greed, idiocy, arrogance and incompetence) - however, this film follows the few people who foretold the crash, and what they did about it. Well worth catching.

What I've Been Listening To
As noted above - David Hepworth's 1971 Spotify playlist. Not only are there more brilliant tunes per inch than you could sensibly wish for, the fact that, in 1971, most of these people were kind of making it up as they went along makes the music all the more astonishing.

Till next time......