Direction or Destination Needed

As I find myself starting down retirement years in the somewhat near future I struggle to find where, how, and why regarding what to do. From the pre-retirement perspective I often wondered why someone would want to keep working if they didn’t have to. Is it that they loved what they did so much they didn’t want to stop? Was it the fear that stopping meant irrelevance and speeding the process to dying?

I don’t share either sentiment as I like what I do and am good enough at it but look forward to stepping away. My fear isn’t that I will become irrelevant and speed toward the afterlife if I stop working. Quite the opposite. I feel as though I should be fitting in more meaningful and adventurous activities before I die. Of course sitting on the couch and watching the hellscape know as the news all day would definitely be a super highway to the end. I also feel that it’s getting closer that my body doesn’t recover as well as it once did and therefore deal with pain more often than I’d like. I pretty much ignore it and even think of it as a badge or courage. If I have some pain from riding my motorcycle many miles or exercising in some manner, I’ll wear that pain proudly. Of course I have to be smart about it.

As you’ll see from the photo above, I faced mortality closer than I’d like to this summer. I worked very hard to paint and restore the deck around my pool. I was quite close to done and sweeping the deck of any sticks so I could start to do some fine tuning of my work. I turned around to step where there was none and with broom in hand went careening across the elevated planter that separate the deck from the pool deck and fell face first onto the pea gravel deck leading to the pool. I’ll spare you the extended story but it was pretty ugly. My son eventually came out and very calmly took over the situation to get me help. There’s nothing like having one of your children calming and comforting you in a moment like that. It’s what we work for as parents to have a child become an adult to handle challenging situations. Outside of that being an expensive fall, reminding me how good but overly expensive our healthcare system is, it all turned out fine and I recovered. I’m sure 10-15 years from now my brain will rebel but so far so good.

I guess the point of this entry into the NQD annals is that young or old we need to keep moving, even if it hurts or at times is dangerous. I’m not going to stop doing projects around my properties or will continue to find athletic goals that challenge my physical ability. I fight quiet desperation every day and you should too.