Retirement is like vacation without the vacating.
So here’s what I’ve accomplished in the first two weeks:
*Took 11 yoga classes
*Read three books
*Read an entire issue of the New Yorker, front to back, including Goings On
*Read the New York Review of Books (sort of)
*Solved 12 crossword puzzles
*Napped morning, noon and night
*Took a zumba class
*Attended one party, met three friends for lunch, four for dinner
*Got my e-mail hacked
*Visited the Genius Bar
*Changed every logon and password
*Actually read and annotated my financial planner’s financial plan
*Lay on the couch for hours on end not really doing anything
Is it over yet?
I am cranky.
I am sick of cat hair. I don’t know what I was thinking when I got a white cat.
I hate it when my yoga teacher rubs my scalp with fingers drenched in lavender oil leaving my hair looking like a wet dog and smelling like a sock drawer.
My gorge rises when I hear the animal noises—grunts, vocalized yawns, burps, borborygmi, snores—of others.
This is one of my favorite photographs. I think I look pretty lively for someone who had finished a year-and-a-half-long course of cancer treatment just a few months earlier. And I’ll always be fascinated by the guy I’m with—Wes Autrey—a.k.a the Subway Hero.
In 2007, Autrey was waiting for a train with his two daughters when he saw a young man fall into a seizure and stumble off the platform onto the tracks. In an instant, Autrey made a multitude of dazzling mental and moral calculations: that the train was coming too fast to stop short of the spasming body, that Autrey didn’t have time to jump down and pull the man to safety, that the space between the trackbed and the undercarriage of the train would accommodate two men lying one on top of the other, that he wanted his two little girls to see him doing the right thing. And he jumped, flattened the guy and held him down as the train passed over them—while his girls watched.
I try hard to be a good person and do the right thing, and I generally make defensible ethical choices, but it would have taken me days—and a measuring tape and a calculator and a lot of Googling of math texts, plus perhaps more courage than I could muster—to make the decision Autrey made in a split second.
Every time I think of Autrey and try to figure out the wizardry of his act, I end up gibbering. Despite all my years of yoga, I cannot grok how he had the sheer presence of mind to act so fast and flawlessly.
On my last trip home, it took me a while to realize that my parents no longer bother to change their clothes for bed. Yes, they brush their teeth and wash their faces. But they don’t take off their day clothes and put on their night clothes. They just climb into the bed they’ve been lying on top of most of the day and pull the covers up.
My mother says it’s because my father has had dizzy spells and she wants to be prepared. (To do what? I’m tempted to ask.) In my dad’s case, it’s because there’s now a full-time home aide who sleeps in the bedroom next to theirs, and he must shield her from seeing the tighty whiteys he used to sleep in.
Good reasons, I’m sure, but depressing nonetheless. It smacks of depression and Why bother to get dressed?
Add to my list of phobias: getting my e-mail hacked. Only it’s not a phobia. It’s reality. On Wednesday, my e-mail address began sending out empty mail under a dozen or so subject headings like I’M FREE, I DID IT! and I HAVE BECAME MY OWN BOSS (sic). Thing is, since I recently stopped working full-time, many recipients—perhaps including my old boss and colleagues, plus prospective freelance clients—assumed they were genuine. So several cheerfully responded with congratulations. Which was heartwarming but spooky.
Why do hackers do this—compromise e-mail accounts? What possible benefit can it give them to ruin my life when they don’t even know me? What is the point?
When layoffs were announced at my company a few weeks ago, I had no intention to volunteer. But when I learned that 40% of my department was on the block, I ran the numbers in the severance package. I could get paid the same amount for working twice as hard or for not working at all.
So here I am, newly retired, without a plan.
On my first day, I saw an audiologist, which sounds depressing but was enlightening: I actually got to try on hearing aids and experience firsthand the difference they made: greater clarity with a touch of tin—and a price tag of $5,500.
The second day, I bought a seven-day introductory all-you-can-eat yoga package for $10 and went to my first class. I’ll cram myself with yoga, bulimia-style, and push down the feelings of panic.
Today yawns before me like a vast wasteland—with a yoga oasis shimmering somewhere in it like a mirage.
When I think about what I want to do with this unexpected empty time, I have conflicting impulses: Fill it up with worthy projects, undertake a new career entirely, lie around and watch television series everybody talked about and I somehow never watched, get really deeply into personal grooming, clean the crap out of my house, slit my wrists (kidding).
For the past nine months, I’ve been paralyzed by anxiety. I don’t know what brought it on or why it won’t go away. I’ve got plenty to worry about—foremost, a homesick child abroad and elderly parents on the precipice—but no actual emergencies. Yet I lurch from dead sleep to waking dread. And the fear flares anew throughout the day with sickening frequency.
The phone rings, and my stomach drops for fear it’s bad news from my parents. An e-mail clangs into my inbox (I must change that chime), and I can’t bring myself to click on it for fear it’s bad news from my daughter.
Any small thing that happens sends me into a swivet of what-ifs. A typo at work, and I envision a lawsuit. Failure to call a friend, and I imagine she’s suicidal.
It just doesn’t stop. So two weeks ago, I asked my doctor for some antianxiety meds. She prescribed Zoloft. But now I’m anxious about taking them. I’ve read there may be a connection between SSRIs and breast cancer. I’ve heard Zoloft is hard to kick. Maybe I can cheer up on my own.
Make it stop.
