I get that question a lot. Also: Are you bored yet? How’s the job-hunting going?
Not bored yet. Not job-hunting yet (that’s imminent, though).
My activities for the 23 weeks I’ve been retired fall into roughly four categories:
- Flurry of activity related to life coaching
- Sludge Time
- A bajillion health appointments
- Flurry of activity related to emerging from Sludge Time
I hired, as my life-coach, the amazing Kelsey Brennan, whom I know first and foremost as an American Players Theatre core company member (and who is currently doing a standout job as the lead in what may be my all-time favorite production @ APT, Proof, which is getting great reviews and selling out fast). She offers a complimentary session as a coach and I found myself so energized after that session, there was no question but what I wanted more. We met four times in April, as I was finishing out my last semester as a professor, my last semester at the now-nonexistent UW-Richland. Then we skipped May–I needed to focus on finals and she needed to focus on getting a new season started at APT. We met four times in June and four times in July, ending approximately on my 58th birthday. I got A LOT done related to that work, but the focus ended up being de-cluttering and making my front porch a useable space. There’s more work to do (PLENTY OF IT) in that regard, but it is a useable space, and sometimes seems almost magical:
I really can’t recommend Kelsey highly enough as a coach. Among other things, she is a Certified Professional Coach through the International Coaching Federation, a title she earned through completing training at UW-Madison. She is energetic and energizing and really, just a fantastic listener and insightful reflector, as in “I’m hearing you say ______” (which sounds kind of corny when I write it that way, but so many times she filled in that blank with things that yes, I was saying, but wasn’t realizing I was saying.)
Other interesting things I’ve done since retiring:
- Did a fair bit of socializing on the porch, especially with friends I’ve been meaning to hang out with but hadn’t gotten around to hanging around with much in my always-exhausted/not-yet-retired mode. (I have a list. I didn’t make it very far through the list before it got cold. The inside of my house isn’t as ready for socializing as the porch.)
- I’ve been active with the River Valley ARTS board, working on Make Music River Valley and an upcoming silent auction of some works by the amazing Peg Miller. I’ve taken over writing the newsletter for RV ARTS, and you can see the latest edition by clicking here. I also had the fun opportunity to be on WRCO a couple of times promoting RV ARTS programs.
- I did the training to become a substitute teacher and may yet do that but am not quite feeling the pull of it yet.
- I took my son for his first college tour.
- I went two different times to a 5th Sunday Hymn sing, led by my amazing friend Susan Thering at the Little Brown Church, where we end every session by singing “Church in the Wildwood” with the lines, “No spot is so dear to my childhood / As the little brown church in the vale.”
- I taught a class on failure and creativity for my amazing former colleague Dr. Valerie Murrenus-Pilmaier, who teaches at the Sheboygan UW campus.
- I hung out with two more former UW Colleges colleagues and very much enjoyed talking over good times over good food.
- I attended an online chapbook workshop offered by the Wisconsin Fellowship of poets.
- I danced to Thriller (see this post for details on that!)
- Began a Mindful Aging class through the UW Health Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Program.
- Attended the award ceremony for my friend Gail Hoffman who was awarded the Underkofler Excellence in Teaching Award. Her speech focused on the teaching cohort we had at UW-Richland, how devoted we were to good teaching there. She is currently thriving at UW-Platteville and credited them with being a teaching-first institution, and I think that’s true, but it touched me beyond words to hear Richland remembered so fondly and so accurately.
In between flurries of activity, there has been what I’m calling SLUDGE TIME:
It was kind of depression. Poems I began to write as I was coming out of Sludge Time (titled, imaginatively, “Sludge Time #1” and so on), have the recurring question: “Is this depression?” and then a question that answered that first question and asked another: “Am I still depressed?” Whatever it was, it seems to be done. I knew it was almost done when I started writing a lot. And I’m still writing a lot–I’ve listed several projects for myself for Nanowrimo, including writing poetry. I’ve been writing a poem a day for a couple of weeks now, all post Sludge-Time-Poems.
I think some of Sludge Time was exhaustion and recovery from having taught in a university system that has been chaotic the last 10-12 years. THAT’S A WHOLE OTHER SET OF BLOG POSTS. The recovery isn’t complete. The fury I felt when I learned the UW System had spent $480,000 to come up with a shitty logo was BIG. And the wave of emotions that came over me upon learning two more former UW Colleges campuses are closing was BIG.
Also part of retirement: health care for myself and my family
I knew I’d been going to a lot of appointments for myself and taking my mother to her appointments and going to some appointments for my Dad, but I was a little startled when I totaled them up. 32 appointments in the last 23 weeks. 10 for Mom and Dad (mostly Mom). One for my son’s wisdom teeth surgery. That leaves 21 for me. Five of those are physical therapy for my back (and those are ongoing). Also, x-rays for my back. A physical. Bloodwork. Sleep Clinic. Bone Density scan. Upcoming: MRI to check in on an incidentaloma in my pancreas. My health has not been fantastic but gosh darn it I’m working on it.
What I thought I might have done by now but haven’t:
- Sent thank you notes for an amazing retirement party back in March. There’s really no good excuse for that lapse of good manners, but I will say this has been a really overwhelming time, the last year since the announcement that my sweet little campus would be closing. And one might express skepticism given how slow I’ve been, but I do intend to get to those thank yous soon.
- Updated my resume/begun to network/started an actual job-hunt. That’s coming–for financial reasons and just sludge time reasons, I need to be working approximately 20-30 hours a week, starting approximately in January. More on that soon!
- Finished cleaning out my office. BUT I’M WORKING ON THAT:
Clockwise from top left: UW Bitchland letterhead (UW Bitchland will never close, btw). My office from outside, with the overhead projector transparency of Emily Dickinson which I fully intend to leave in the window. Some Dickinson and Bishop books I haven’t packed up yet (with, I think, a cardboard cutout of Dickinson sticking out from between books). And my paper-thin, cheap regalia, because I was too cheap to spend money on something I’d wear once a year (I never attended my grad school graduations so I didn’t have any). I made a medallion out of gold duct tape because I found the medallions others wore to be (somewhat/very) affected and precious, and I just wanted to be able to point to my chest and say “Mine’s bigger.” Which I did at least four times.
Finally, this is like the creepiest thing I’ve seen in a while:
If you look to the left and downward from the Dickinson pic, you can see the shadow of the transparency on my blinds. It looks like an Emily Dickinson alien ghost. Also of note: the rusty slime that sometimes dripped on the inside of my office (state legislators and the UW System weren’t the only ones neglecting my sweet little campus). I really can’t think of a better image to end things with. Creepy, hilarious, poetic. C’est moi.
marniere 