How We Spend Our Days

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
Annie Dillard

This week I begin my second year of retirement from the mainstream business world. Although we are much poorer and may finish our lives in the Pythonesque luxury of a cardboard box at the side of the road, I can’t help looking back on the past year with something like satisfaction. A new job has a learning curve. So does the loss of one.

Whereas my lunch hour 6K run used to be a welcome escape from the sometimes tedious tasks I was engaged in at the office, nowadays a workout session is something I can do when I am ready; I need no escape routes. On weekends, I used to feel slothful for not making the most of my free time and getting my run or bike session done early and earnestly. Today the concept of the weekend—and what has to be squeezed into it—is somewhat less distinct than it once was. Efficient and effective squeezing is not required.

After nearly thirty years, I have finally admitted that I hate exercising early in the morning; now I don’t have to get the workout done early make to way for my day. A workout is part of my day.

(I’m actually terrible at everything when I first get up: this morning I poured my orange juice into my coffee cup. This hypnogogic ineptitude extends to writing as well; unlike many writers, I rarely produce anything coherent or sensible until at least noon.)

 The difference between how I allocate my time now and how I did it a year ago is that when I was at the office all day, I had to make the time to train and write. Now, I choose the time.

How to spend a  day

In fact, being retired from a nine-to-five job is like being handed a whole book full of blank pages. Unlike the early days of parenthood and mortgage-paying work responsibilties, there is now more choice among which pages to fill in and which ones to leave blank.


This freedom of course comes with its own pitfalls. I could end up staring out the window all day or straightening my sock drawer for hours. For this reason I’ve always found it easier to plan my time well when I have a goal, whether it’s to deal with the dandelions or to finish an Ironman.

To this end I went and entered my first race of the year, an Olympic distance triathlon in Guelph in June. The last race I did of this distance was the Muskoka 5150 (now sadly no more), and it was a great warm up to the season. The distance is just right to get all the right parts moving, but is not destructive or debilitating to those parts.

Entering a race is like buying a new hat. It offers new possibilities and places them squarely on my head. It makes me decide what training steps I need to take in the next six weeks. It gives me something around which I can plan other activities and obligations (and they do exist). I have home improvement projects. I need to earn some dollars working at various professional projects. To top it all off, this spring I have been somehow talked into singing in a small concert in June, my first such outing in years.

Me in The Magic Flute, 1987

Singing, writing about singing, athletic training, and improving the cardboard box we call home. The pages of my days are filling in, but in the past year they have become my pages and my days. How good to have finally recognized, now that I am in my sixties, how I always wanted to spend my life.