One of my favorite quotes from Gail Rentsch's book Smart Women Don't Retire--They Break Free, is the following: "For instance, if you are a type-A personality, leave blocks of unscheduled time in your calendar for just daydreaming or doing whatever pops into your mind, and avoid making plans in advance to fill that time." (Rentsch, p. 124)
This advice speaks to me. After 34 years of never having a moment to even think about daydreaming, I love the fact that someone with expertise is telling me that it's okay to have some days where you don't have your calendar filled. It's okay to have the downtime. One of my best daydream times is the period in the morning, after I have first awakened. Because I have a cat and a dog, I am obliged to get up early and feed / take them out. But then, if it's really an ungodly hour (i.e., for me anything before 7 a.m.), I go back to bed and do some of my best daydreaming, or as I like to call it "fuzzy thinking." I sometimes write whole paragraphs in my head or imagine whole conversations that characters in a novel might speak.
During the summer, another time I engage in very productive daydreaming is when I am stretched out on my new chaise lounge on the screened-in deck on the back of the house, surrounded by tall oaks, listening to the quiet sounds of summer. Today was a perfect 80 degree low-humidity day. The silence of a warm summer day always puts me in a mood where I feel in touch with my surroundings. The crickets were chirping; the lawn mowers were humming; the birds were singing. It doesn't get much better than that.
When I was working, it was rare that I could spend part of my Sunday engaging in such "non-productive" behavior, actually enjoying some of the nicer aspects of my home. I have always been a Type-A personality and I'm still haunted by that achievement-oriented side of myself that whispers to me "What did you do today that was productive?" "What did you do to make the world a better place?"
Today I can answer that question very honestly and not feel guilty: I went to church. I sat on the porch and meditated. I read several chapters in one of the books on my reading list. I wrote on my blog.
Signing off and waiting to hear from you . . .
Most days I ignore the thought that I'm on a journey of learning. It seems my focus is on seeing how much I can check off on a worklist. Being retired for several years hasn't cured me of the self-pressure to work the list. In your blog you are addressing the the limitations of the need to be "productive". Seeing life as a journey of discovery sounds like fun or at least more interesting than feeling that the purpose of today was to get the car serviced and the pantry stocked. In reading today's blog, it seemed as if I were riding on your stream of thoughts about shifting your response to the situation called retirement. Helen
ReplyDelete