The Olympics are on! I never think I’ll get so excited, but have already started recording and adjusting my sleep and TV watching time to follow them. And I realized, again, that I have more life lessons to learn, especially about retirement. Here is another perk about this new phase of life that I’m learning… from the Olympics.
Live life flexibly. You are your own scheduler in retirement. You may sleep, eat, shop, do anything, on your own timetable. Has you ever read the “Dayworld” books by Philip Jose Farmer? They’re about a future of overpopulation where people share their space on the planet with 6 others, all of whom take turns living one day a week and going to suspended-animation pods the other days. In this way, the world only seems one-seventh as crowded as the real number of people. Well, the Olympics are on, 14 hours ahead of my own time zone, and I want to watch them live and not packaged into a pre-recorded show that the rest of the (working on someone else’s timetable) world must submit to. So I do. I get up early. I stay up late. I eat when hungry and take a nap when tired. I wander my own “Dayworld” off-time from most of the world around me.
True, it can’t last forever. I have working friends, and family, and sports schedules of my own to follow with everyone else. But for now, with the Olympics on, I can be in South Korea with them, on their schedule, and enjoy being off-schedule in my own world here. It’s an awesome vacation! And a valuable retirement lesson.
Stevie Szabad, Author 