Normality? What is that??

Normality? What is that? Well, I think it could be what I'm starting to feel in my new life as a retired person: there's starting to be rhythm to it all.

At last after almost 10 weeks of days filled with tears, anger, resentment, disbelief and a huge feeling of loss, I woke up this Monday and realised that this feeling, whatever it was in my stomach (no not hunger - never!) had actually disappeared as if it had never been there in the first place. A bit of an awakening in many ways.

I have no idea why or what it is that's actually changed, but changed it has. I'm waking with a positivity that had deserted me, and it's great to welcome it back.

I realise that actually retirement is not that bad, and I can at last see some opportunities in this new way of living.

The freedom to start to plan the travels we talked about for example, to start looking at my garden with eyes that see it as a joy rather than a chore to fit in with work. An opportunity to learn to play the keyboard properly that's sat looking at me mournfully from its corner in the spare room. Finally, a little bit of gentle ribbing from my son about the content of my last blog also gave me food for thought.

Retirement is starting to feel a bit cliched to be truthful, it gets to about 4pm and I wonder where the day has gone? Everyone said, 'you'll wonder how you found time to work'! Well we're not there yet by any means, but the days do seem to fly by. I honestly do have to check my watch occasionally to check what day it is!! Honestly!

I guess not getting up till about 9.30/10 is part of that, but once the lighter mornings start in the Spring I'm expecting that to change, right now, it's rather nice to have a relaxed morning cuppa together, rather than rushing up and getting off to work.

I still can't get to sleep much before midnight - years of late nights working have left their mark, so we're learning to enjoy what Netflix has to offer......... 😄 or else at last, I've given myself 'permission' to make a start on the stack of unread books that have always been for 'when I've time to read' them.

I realise that essentially, retirement (however much I longed for it) has been essentially like a bereavement of sorts. Not only from the sheer physical activity of work, but all the friendships and relationships within the workplace, the reality of patterns of behaviour learnt over years of work were suddenly swept away. I thought I was prepared, but I now see I absolutely wasn't.

More (honest) ramblings soon,

Liz x

Comments

Well I never! ( warning - sweary post)

Well I fucking never!!!!!!!! Talk about bad to fucking worse!!! 57 days after the first case of recorded Covid-19 in the UK we as a country are locked down........... It's almost beyond comprehension isn't it!!?? Myself in particular things went slightly from bad to worse with a return to hospital 3 days after being discharged, only this time my Asthma was really in overdrive and the big guns were wheeled out, i,e: Strong drips and other shag me dead strong medication 🙈 Another 7 days confined to the brilliant respiratory ward again, I was allowed home, you could tell things were ramping up at the hospital and there was an awful sense of waiting for the worst to happen, so I wanted to be home an d if the end of the world was coming I wanted it to be at home with my love. Of course it doesn't seem like the world is ending but some people have definitely lost their marbles by the way they're behaving! Fucking idiots is one of the milder ones I've yelled at t...

Strike a pose! Its all about the hands!

We (Husband and I) were very, very pleased to have a voucher as one of our retirement gifts for a photo shoot with an incredibly talented and award winning photographer in our area - Martyn Norsworthy. I know Martyn really well and he's photographed me before, both for business and personally. He knows I'm never pleased with how I look, despite all appearances to the contrary and I'm very low on self esteem and personal body image. It didn't help that unusually for us, husband and I had a quite blistering row the night before. Well I say row; I shouted and himself listened! You know how it goes don't you! :) Anyway, the whole shoot was brilliant and a very sneak peek re-assured me that the photos would look ok. Well, they were more than ok, and we were incredibly pleased, however, there were the usual comments from me - can you make my teeth whiter, can you crop it a bit so you can't see how big chested I am, etc etc. But...

Auntie Joan - To Grieve is to have Loved

I guess this photo of my Husbands Auntie Joan is typical of it's day, and probably fairly typical of most orders of service booklets for funerals for people of her years. Although I'd only met her a couple of times, Auntie Joan appears to have been a fairly standard woman of her day; much loved by many, long marriage, 2 good sons and grandchildren. Artistic and proud of her handmade cards. Auntie Joan didn't want a eulogy at her service - this was apparently made clear in a letter left and underlined! So I'm guessing there was steel behind the classy glasses of her time and that faint smile. The Vicar (a super chap who did Auntie Joan and the Church proud) spoke movingly about love and loss, and that to grieve means we also had to have loved. Typically stoical middle Englanders in the assembled gathering who up until that point had been pretty dry eyed, started to shuffle tissues from pockets and gently sniff! Beautiful browsing...

Retired from work - but NOT from life!

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