For the last few years, I’ve been looking forward to retiring so I can finally pursue my own interests—or so I believed. I’ve been retired for almost a year and things aren’t exactly going to plan.
First off, medical science has basically determined I should not do anything that I like and want to do. Diet is the most obvious. Any foods that I like are apparently going to kill me in 30 minutes or less if I eat them. On the other hand, any food that intensely dislike is okay. It shouldn’t matter, though. With the number of pills I take, my stomach should be full.
Second, the activities that I liked to do are no longer possible. I used to like to jog, but thanks to several surgeries, that is off the table. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that medical science has been conspiring against me for years and is just now realizing the effect it’s having.
I had also planned to grow my hair long and regrow the beard I had in my younger days. What hair I have left looks like Doc Brown from Back to the Future on a bad hair day in a hurricane. Beard? It would be dull grey and probably make me look 50 years older.
I have not yet learned to enjoy the standard joys of a retired man, such as standing in the middle of the aisle in the grocery store to block everyone else or driving real slow on the interstate during rush hour. I was so bad at golf when I tried to play years ago that there is no appeal there, although I could enjoy driving around in a gulf cart—just because.
If you like science fiction, I strongly recommend Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. Even though the author is younger than I am, his character explains things better than I can. Like most science fiction works, it’s a trilogy with several additional books added later. (Think Dune).
I think I’m going to post this and take a nap. Napping is the one activity I’m god at, in fact I get better as time goes on.
sfnowak 