A week ago I returned from a five-week trip to Argentina. During the first three weeks of the trip, I felt as if I were floating in a dreamy state of experiential bliss: observing new sights, walking and exploring endlessly, starting many conversations with strangers, and living free from schedules, to-do lists, obligations, and tyrannical self-rule, to which I have at least 50 years' worth of in-brain jail time. By the fourth week, I organized myself enough to eat vegetables, take my vitamins, and stop eating any pastries or junk food, but that's where the bossiness ended. So when my plane landed in Baltimore, I fully expected to enter the jail cell of my brain and endure the endless orders that an Organized Person gives to herself in order to Get Things Done.
There was only one thing to cause tension in my mind. My host in Cordoba, Argentina, looked at me intently, and asked "What kind of work do you intend to do when you return?" I cast about in my floaty vacation state, and couldn't come up with anything except, "Get my violin out and start practicing my scales....?" "But what kind of work?" he persisted. I just could not answer him. I knew I needed to do something, but I couldn't figure out what.
A week after my return, my usual tense self-exhortations to WORK, and to do my weekly planning and extreme day scheduling had not happened. Although I wrote all my weekly goals in my fabulous Planner Pad, they were all relaxed and happy: rehearse Shostakovich, finish Giardinelli novel, start editing Argentina blog, start watching the video, "Sewing with Silk," etc. My daily life has been likewise relaxed. WHY???
I think it is because I am now retired. RETIRED!! Retired from the need to tightly schedule my interests around my work, to organize all my time efficiently and smartly, to push push push to accomplish accomplish accomplish. The five weeks in Argentina gave me a break in which to part ways with my weird driving nature of a working life, and have a relaxed re-entry to my new retired life.
So now I have an open and kindly-natured attitude to let ideas enter about what will happen next. There are so many possibilities! Here is a toast to being imaginative, helpful, creative, inquisitive and fun---so everyone can enjoy life along with me---and perhaps get a bit of interesting work out of me! CHEERS!
3 comments:
CHEERS to you on adopting a more relaxed life style. I hope you will continue to enjoy the results of slowing down just a little bit. Your slow is still most people's hectic. I love that you wrote an epilogue to your trip. I have become addicted. Yes, yes, yes definitely keep my name on your blog list. Thanks.
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Computers constantly play tricks on me.
This post makes me happy. I'm so glad the tyrannical self rule has quietened down. Who knows what wonderful things will emerge! I hope I can adopt the same attitude on my return. Disfrute!
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