I’m not saying right is wrong
It’s up to us to make
The best of all the things
That come our way
Oasis.
So I in the process of retiring from a job, no profession or some might say a vocation which took up roughly 65 hours a week for the last quarter of century. Whatever shall I fill the time with? I do not wish to slide away into some sofa bound existence watching loose women and homes under the hammer. Little by little I want to make a difference, there is no point giving up work if I don’t make my life better. I don’t want to look back in anger at the decision taken for me but one I was completely supportive of.
My job involved being at my workplace at 7am and being completely engaged until 6pm with breaks being what you get in the private sector, working from home wasn’t an option (difficult to get thirty pre-pubescent children around the dining table), corporate lunches in a trendy cafe didn’t happen. It was intense. So what next?
Monday - Spin class
Tuesday- Hatha yoga
Wednesday - Spin class
Thursday- Swimming
Friday -Hatha yoga
I am suddenly the most important the thing in my life, a very odd sensation when I spent my whole adult life putting others first. But please don’t think that I am crying my heart out. That’s what I enjoyed doing and wished to do. So my days are full, but there is a strict process to guide what I spend my time on. I prioritise managing my body, yoga for strength and balance, spin for low impact cardio. On Thursday it is swimming for strength and cardio, I also use the steam room and the sauna to loosen up the tight muscles. I feel great, the aches and pains have significantly decreased, the falls and near falls have nearly disappeared too. The daily grind had been having a profoundly negative impact on my body, but that just became my normal. The painful immobile shoulder, the swollen knee, the excruciating burning sensation running through my lower back ,was just how it was. Now if it is not having a positive impact on my family or me it does not get a look in. My mental health is fed by volunteering, writing and spending time with my family when I am not held together mentally and physically by sticking plasters and a large serving of pure bloody mindedness. My wife would tell me that I was getting through my days on sheer stubbornness alone. I just thought I had to roll with it, just get on with it. I thought she was being melodramatic, now I realise she was being truthful.
My Dad is my hero and he never bloody gave up, he never gave in, even now in his late seventies he continues in this vein and I wanted to be the same as him, just like any son would. When I told my parents that I would be giving up my vocation, I was worried they would think that I was capitulating, they didn’t. I must have been bad, little did they know that crossing the road had become a colossal task for me, little did they know that the physical pain had become overwhelming on a daily basis. I can tell them now it is over. Now I feel that I can live forever.
Michael