Tick Tock Goes the Clock – A Cautionary Tale

I no longer have a functioning relationship with time. 

And it seems to have happened the minute (pardon the pun) my sub-conscious realized I had nowhere to go and no particular time to be there. 

... about thirty seconds after my first pension cheque was deposited.

So beware.  I suspect it will happen to you as well!

When I initially retired, I tried to make a go of it without a wrist watch.  After all, that pesky wrist watch represented everything a work day was and retirement was not – timetables, schedules, and deadlines.  If I indeed had nowhere to go and no particular time to be there, what possible reason could I have for wanting to know what time I wasn’t going to be there.

Well, that experiment turned into an unmitigated disaster!  


It turns out, I have this almost pathological need to know what time it is.  While it is technically true that I have nowhere to go and no particular time to be there, I desperately need to know what time it is when I have this nowhere to go and no particular time to be there.  No matter how passionately I wanted to free myself from the clutches of time, my will-power was too puny to overcome 30+ years of career conditioning.

That said …. I may now know precisely what time it is …  but I can no longer actually get anywhere on time.  For someone who used to pride herself on her punctuality, this new turn of events is very vexing.

I am now perpetually late (or close to) for almost everything.

I can no longer schedule morning doctor or dentist appointments.  All medical appointments must now be booked for after twelve noon, otherwise I will be late.  On more than one occasion I have screeched into the medical center parking lot just as the two o’clock news is starting up on the car radio – and have congratulated myself for being “on time” for a two o’clock appointment.

For someone who used to rigorously schedule “travel time” into every trip – I now find myself wandering aimlessly around the apartment a good ten to fifteen minutes after I should have been long gone.

If it wasn’t for the fact that various forms of public transportation actually do run to a published schedule, I would miss the opening faceoff, tip-off, pitch, and credits of any number of events. 

When I eventually remember I have dry cleaning to pick up, a library book on hold, a prescription to refill – it’s past closing time.

Which might lead one to believe that even though I know I am going to be late for an appointment, I at least know on which day of the week I am going to be late.

Well, you’d be wrong again!

Just because I scribble all my appointments into my calendar, in fact depend on my calendar to tell me where I should be, and am continually harping on other retirees to get and use a calendar, I seem to have lost the ability to actually use a calendar.

More than once occasion has found me standing in the middle of the kitchen, desperately trying to remember if I’m supposed to be somewhere else.  Yes, I’m almost positive I should be somewhere else, but I don’t know if I should be somewhere else today because I’m not really one-hundred percent sure I know what day it actually is.  


And since I don’t know what day it is, looking at my calendar is of no particular use whatsoever. 

So honest to goodness, I have to find a newspaper or fire up my laptop or turn on the weather network to find out not only what day it is, but the actual date as well.

And I am not alone in suffering with this affliction.  More times that I am willing to tell, a pack of us gainfully unemployed have been sitting around a table trying to figure out when and where we are ….

“….. we should make plans to go to (insert destination or event of your choice) on the 25^th ……”

“Yes, that is an excellent suggestion.”

“Yes, let’s go!”

“I’m in!  No, wait.   When is the 25^th?  If it’s a Tuesday, I think I have an appointment.”

“I think it’s a Friday.  Because today is …. Thursday ….”

“No, it’s Wednesday today, isn’t it?  Because I went to yoga class on Tuesday, didn’t I?”

“It can’t be Wednesday today, because Wednesday is recycling day and I didn’t put the 
bins out!”

“ ….. anyone got a calendar?”

I retired so I could be free of clocks; be free of calendars; be free of deadlines.

“Be careful what you wish for” says the adage.

…. so if I was supposed to meet you for lunch yesterday and I didn’t show, I apologize. 

Because if yesterday was Tuesday, that would make today Wednesday. 

Or was it Monday yesterday? 

But anyway, I thought we weren’t meeting until Thursday?


Anyone got a calendar?

"I've Got A List" - Part Deux

At the same time you are compiling your “things I’d like to do when I retire” list, you should also be compiling an activities calendar of events, shows, fairs, ‘fests, ‘paloozas, ‘athons, etc., that happen each month in your city, town, borough, hamlet, corner of the world.  If you’re already picking up flyers and brochures every time you visit the library and community centre, if you are already regularly checking the “events” calendar in your local newspaper and subscribing to newsletters published by any organization of which you have any sort of passing fancy, you’re already half-way there.  (Also, you might want to pop into an Ontario Tourism kiosk and rummage around the racks.  That’s how I found about the “Steampunk Festival” in Coldwater!)

Start documenting.  Now.  At least five years before you actually retire.

At home, I’ve always worked with a traditional paper calendar.  So in my case, “documenting” events was a piece of cake.  I just started writing stuff in my calendar.  And at the end of the year, I transferred everything I had written down to the next year’s calendar, kept on writing stuff down, and at the end of the year, I transferred everything to the next year’s calendar and so on and so on and by the end of 2012, when I actually did retire, I already had a year worth’s of fun and frivolity to look forward to in 2013. 

My “calendar” list looked a little like this:

January – New Year’s Day events at City Hall (every city and hamlet will have something planned for the New  Year); Ryerson Image Centre new exhibits

February – Canadian International Auto Show; Canada Blooms

March – Spring Flower Show, Centennial Park Conservancy; One-of-a-Kind Spring Craft Show

April – Alpaca Show, Orangeville; new exhibits, Ryerson Image Centre

May – Farmer’s Markets; Port Credit Artfest; ROM Walking Tours; Open Doors Toronto (there’s an “Open Doors” celebration is most mid-size cities in Ontario at some point over the summer –ie: Stratford “Open Doors” is in June)

June – “Knit in Public” Day; Port Credit Waterfront Festival; Summer Flower Show, Centennial Park Conservancy

July – Ribfest (Centennial Park, Etobicoke; Celebration Square, Mississauga); Art Show, Nathan Phillips Square

August – Steampunk Festival; Port Credit Buskerfest

September – “Art in the Park”, Visual Arts Mississauga; Art Show, Nathan Phillips Square; Kitchener Fibre and Wool Festival; International Plowing Match; new exhibits, Ryerson Image Centre

October – “Soupfest”, Holland Marsh; Port Credit Art Tour; Chrysanthemum Show, Centennial Park Conservancy

November – Royal Winter; Fair Christmas One-of-a-Kind Craft Show

December – Fort York Christmas Market; Distillery District Christmas Market;  Candlelight Christmas Display, Centennial Park Conservancy

(... yes, you may have to pay an admission to some of the events on your list, but a surprising number of them will turn out to be free! ROM walking tours, Open Doors weekends, and the Ryerson Image Centre just to name three.)

Then, what you do on the day you retire, is combine your “what I want to do when I retire” list with your “events calendar” and you too will soon find yourself so busy being retired you will begin to wonder how you ever found time to work in the first place!

And if any one dares rolls their eyes …… just threaten to show them your calendar!

The List!

(Capital “T” – Capital “L”)

Note to self – a New Year’s resolution. 

If you keep telling people you blog, you should actually, you know …. blog. 

Better yet, you might perhaps try updating said blog on a regular basis.

Like now. 

Before it gets any later than the beginning of February.

So here I am, trying not to make too big a liar out of myself – blogging!!

I wish I could use the same excuse I used about this time last year, about being too distracted and unfocused to concentrate on …. well, to concentrate on anything at all, let alone updating blogs.

But this fall/winter, I seem to have the opposite problem.  Too many projects and really, really, good ideas chasing each other around in my brain like rabid squirrels.  And not nearly enough hours in the day to accomplish anything to my real satisfaction.

All thanks to that annoying, pesky List.

You know, that “list” I keep droning on and on and on about in these postings (my list, your list, The List).  Three years retired and I am casting a more thoughtful and discerning eye at My List.  Items are being crossed off of that list.  And some very interesting items have made their way on  …..

But before I start bragging about the flotsam and jetsam now on my list, maybe I should explain how my “list” came together in the first place.

I really did start thinking about my list about five years prior to my actual retirement date.  Once I had figured out that financially, I could actually make early retirement work, I began starting a lot of sentences and day-dream fantasies with the phrase “when I retire, I will …….”.

And I actually did start to write down all of those day-dream fantasies, all of those things I wished I had time to do, didn’t have the time to do, wished I could see, etc., etc., etc.

And by “write down”, I mean I “wrote” them down on an actual piece of paper with an actual pen.  Not in an electronic organizer, not on an imaginary blackboard in my head, but on a physical piece of paper. 

Every time I thought of something I wished I could be doing, instead of going into work, I wrote it down.

So starting now, every time you think of something you wish you could be doing, but don’t have the actual time to do because you are still working full-time - write it down.  


Start to list the books you want to read, the CD’s you want to listen to, the DVD’s you want to binge watch.  


Or maybe it’s something more practical like finally getting to the weeds in the back garden.  


Or wishing you could sign up for that yoga class that only seems to happen on a weekday afternoon.

Or maybe it’s as big and grand as visiting the Louvre, getting a food truck, or going on a cross-country road trip. 

Start making a list all of the things, that on a daily basis, you simply like to do.  Gardening, photography, jogging, yoga, reading, woodworking, sports, volunteering, bike riding. 

If you’re stuck and really can’t think of anything to put on your list (and some may be), one of the retirement planning books I read (and I really wish I had written down the title and author**), suggested starting with these four categories:

- activities that I enjoy now

- activities that I enjoyed in the past

- new activities I have thought of doing

- activities that will get me physically fit

Give retirement a think in terms of these categories and you might be surprised at the eventual look of “Your List”!

I will admit that in the beginning, I may have thought of my “list” as more of a lark, a way of annoying everyone in the office.  But once I actually retired, I was happy I had “My List”.  When I was stuck or I stumbled, The List reminded me why I had retired in the first place.    


And I will be honest, there are items that have disappeared from my list all together and probably will not be making a return appearance, like my wanting to desperatelt snag a gig as a tour guide at the Mattamy Centre.  (For one thing, who has the time any more!)

But many more items and activities have found their way onto my list (like bird watching and the fact that I think I can design myself a butt-kicking hat for this year’s Steampunk Festival!)

But it’s okay if “The List” - your list, my list - starts growing and changing – we’re retired!!

(**the book may have been “How to Retire Happy, Wild and Free” by Ernie Zelinski and the exercise may have called “Get a Life Tree”.  I’ll show you my “Get a Life Tree” if you’ll show me your’s!)

(and just a reminder, a year-end budget review should have been everyone’s New Year’s resolution!  Gasoline prices are down, but as a type II diabetic, those fresh fruit and veggie prices are wreaking havoc with my grocery budget!)