Retirement

Unsure what to write about today. So I looked through the raw images of pictures I took this month and decided to use this one. Given the caption, I picked a favorite topic: retirement.

It has been over fourteen years since I worked.That amazes me. Not that it seems like just yesterday that I had a job, but that I have really not accomplished many of the goals I had.

To quote a blog entry from almost seven years ago (so half way into the journey): 

I saw myself getting everything in my (old) house organized and working to a fault. I saw myself fit and active and achieving things, doing things for others. I thought my financial life would be organized and I'd have learned lots of new things. Of course, there were those books that I was going to write and entertaining and informative WEB sites that I was going to design.
I don't know when the vision shifted to downtown living. When I retired in 2002, downsizing was on my mind but the idea of living in 1200 square feet or so was not really something I'd considered.

So I spent a lot of time from my retirement in 2002 to 2009, not so much getting organized or learning things or being creative but, let's see, remodeling the house one last time before we would leave it. And then, around 2007, seriously downsizing to move downtown.

Something else that was on my mind early on was travel. Unconstrained by counting vacation days, how hard could it be? Turns out there are constraints. As I said back in 2009:

FFP was still working full time running his agency and wasn't ready to do much traveling. However, not too many weeks after I retired I was off to Colorado with my dad and then off to Berlin. Dad was doing better then. He could travel, drive even. My in-laws had quit driving but could still walk around the neighborhood and take cabs to go places. Intellectually I knew that they would become more feeble and have more needs.  

So, yeah, I got away a bit right after retirement (which was right after my mother's death). But in 2009, I could feel the implications of the age of my three remaining parental units we were responsible for. (My dad would have some serious health issues in 2009 and he would die in 2010 in the midst of a health scare for my husband. Both in-laws would die in 2011.)

As I summed it up in 2009, vis-a-vis travel:

I did get back to South Africa, had a trip to Dublin, a driving trip or two with FFP, trips to New York, two trips to France with FFP. It sounds like a lot but it's been seven years and we didn't go anywhere in the last twelve months except for a short trip to New York, a night in San Antonio and a couple of nights at Lake Austin Spa. 

We do seem to reliably get to the Northwest every year. We've made more trips to New York. Been a few times to New Orleans. I don't really count all the back and forth trips to Houston to follow up on FFP's health scare. We made it to France in 2015 and Dublin and Italy in 2016. But, no, in spite of not having accomplished all the learning, organization, and creative goals, I also have not traveled enough. We keep saying we have to do it while we can still comfortably travel, but we've become more and more convinced of the need for well-planned travel with first class accommodations.

I found while stealing the past ruminations on my failed retirement that I gave George Bush advice on his retirement.

Anyway, I'm always telling people who retire that I'll advise them. But, really, I've failed at managing my own.

Presents

This graffiti is in South Austin. On Monroe I think. The streets really are full of presents for me. When I'm not depressed and I walk: every twig and feather, every piece of trash, every person and what they are wearing, every house, every car, every dog, every sign seems interesting. When I am depressed these same things don't seem interesting but they do distract me from my depression.

Today I was not depressed. Life seemed full of possibilities and new things to be conquered. When I'm not depressed, that's how it is. The NY Times Magazine crossword was easy. With help from FFP I finished it. Completely. No cheating. I enjoyed it. I learned a new word. Lanose if you must know. I told FFP that the blogs would rate it easy. They did. I don't care. I finished. I enjoyed.

We ate at a new place. Lucky Robot. Food was fine. You ordered and paid with an electronic gizmo on your table. The waitress was nice.

FFP shopped for hats. I was patient.

We went to Armadillo Christmas which was overcrowded. We heard music from afar. (Carolyn Wonderland.) Our friends wanted to leave and go to Threadgill's. No arguments from us. We had some drinks and food. We talked of many things. Memory and its fickle workings, the old Armadillo piano that's been brought back to Threadgill's, fine dining in NYC, couples' secret languages, books.

We came home to an evening of reading and TV. I tramped around a lot south of the river today. The streets really were full of presents for me in my current mental state. And so it goes.

Hope

Lots of people are looking for hope these days...including this graffiti artist who thoughtfully put a message going both ways on the hike and bike.

My mental landscape veers between hope and anxiety, bouncing around like the stock market.

So far we don't think our unit is impacted by the massive leak in our building and don't think they will be wielding their sledge hammers in here. (Although they gave us a scare yesterday by sending us an e-mail about removing material from our unit).

It's a cozy little nest, this place is, exactly like we want it with a few exceptions. The shades aren't right yet and there isn't a sub-woofer (although the surround sound is awesome even without it). Many channels we are paying for are 'searching for satellite' a lot of the time. There are still a few pictures to hang and a couple of small pieces of furniture to work out. Nothing cosmic. It's really peaceful and lovely in here.

When you step out the door, however, there is a vaguely industrial smell, fans blowing and wallpaper whipping around some bare studs, baseboards pulled off. When the elevator stops on other floors you hear the roar of fans and see piles of debris. Going in and out of the place feels strange. When you get close to the door there is that roar. I've become obsessive about cleaning my place and reorganizing. Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

People wiped out by Ike and other floods, residents of this very building whose units are like the hallway all have far more reason to let the thing called hope fly away. But, as it says in a part of the poem (by Emily Dickinson, of course) not so often quoted:

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've been trying from the beginning to think of this condo as a permanent place, a home for many years. Now I simply see it as a resting place before the next storm.

Keeping the Graffiti at Bay

I thought of posting this graffiti from South Congress on my Austin Daily Photo blog. But I decided to save those readers and just give it to you denizens of the Visible Woman. (The snowman is a nice touch, yes?) Not that I'm trying to protect those readers over there but, really, I need to get out and take some more 'representative' pictures for them. I've been a little under the weather with allergies (I guess, maybe cedar fever). A twelve-hour chunk of my day yesterday was devoted to sitting and drinking hot drinks and reading and watching TV and waiting for time to take more decongestant or Advil. Sad. It's good to not work so one can nurse whatever. I played tennis in the morning but the sneezing and dripping took a lot of the joy out of it. This morning I felt better until the drainage started while I was talking to my dad and I coughed some and, well, it wasn't pretty. Usually these things just take time, but I don't like giving them time.

So will I turn it around and accomplish something today? We have a stuffed to the gills garbage can going out today and a bunch of recycling. I've officially conquered the newspaper problem (for the moment, they keep showing up) with more going out than coming in until there are barely any papers that aren't today's sitting around. FFP just handed me some photographs to 'file' somewhere. I said "Yeah, I'll file them as well as I file anything around here!"

Mustn't get too discouraged, though. I have trouble looking at what I got rid of and, instead, tend to concentrate on what is still lurking. It's easy to walk around the house and see stuff that needs to be 'dealt with.' What's gone is starting to be a little more obvious: blank spaces on bookshelves (though there are still lots of books in lots of places), blank areas of rooms where something say that has been given away. But what's gone is overwhelmed by what's still here. Of course, when we are looking for something it is nowhere to be found. This morning we were looking for a spare key to someone else's house. I found unknown keys and keys to our deadbolt locks and keys to the mail box. But, well, you get the idea. Simplify, simplify. Eventually it will be easier by virtue of the fact that there will be fewer spots to look that have anything to look at. When you live somewhere thirty years things can wash up in corners of drawers and the backs of closets that are real puzzles.

Now if I can just start breathing easier I can get back into this crazy thrill ride that said we have room to keep whatever we want whether we could find it again, needed it, would ever use it or, even, remembered what its purpose was. That's hubris. A result of having too much space. The cure is painful, though. Sorting stuff and sorting it again.

By the way, I have no idea why I continue writing a blog every day. It must have something to do with displacing from everything else I need to do. There is no NaBloPoMo or Holidailies that I've signed up for. There is no requirement to meet. But 'just typing' here (and in my personal journal) feels like such an indulgence and treat that it feels like being nice to myself. And, I can do it while drinking coffee and sitting and waiting for the next sneeze or sniffle. But onward. Progress today. Just do something.

E.A.S.T.ern Art

The graffiti in this picture apparently refers to the latest show at AMOA (Austin Museum of Art) but I took it on the sidewalk at one of the 86 official locations in this year's East Austin Studio Tour in Austin. It was a lovely day and we started our eastwardly adventures by eating at the Eastside Cafe. Then we took in a few of the more northernly studios (including Karen Maness) and then a few of the more furthest south (including Art Amici where Jennifer Balkan was showing).

It was a glorious day starting cool and sunny and warming up to the point where the sunny spots felt warm and the shade felt cool.

This afternoon I saw the premiere of young Jake Sawyer's short film Downloader. A pretty ambitious undertaking from a teenager, this film showed a very adult sensibility and communicated obsessive compulsive behavior, office politics, office romance, paranoia and our Internet/drug/technology culture in a way you wouldn't really think a young kid would understand. Plus it had cops and stunts and lots more. John Merriman starred and was fabulous and funny and convincing from the beginning to the end. Young Jake directed a lot of adults in this short and did it well.

It's an artsy town, Austin. Radical NY indeed.