After a few months of temporary part-time jobs and then a week or so of company, I sat down the other day and decided to get myself “organized.”
In retirement, I’m not actually interested in keeping a schedule, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have something loose – a loosey-goosey pseudo-plan for the day. I spent a morning sketching it out – the things I wanted to accomplish. Walk the dog. Exercise. Write, read, maybe in a pinch do a little cleaning. Occasionally getting together with friends. Maybe doing something constructive. After a few hours I had a plan that I might possibly commit to.
The next day, I walked Ben by 7:30 a.m. Took myself for a walk by 8:30. Planned on sitting down to write by 9 a.m. But I ran into a neighbor while walking and it was closer to 9:30 before I actually sat down to do anything. Still, for a loosey-goosey schedule that seemed OK.
Day two was a little less successful. I wasted about 20 minutes falling down rabbit holes on the internet and then put my shoes on to take a walk. Except Ben felt like that was a signal he needed to go out, despite having taken a walk only an hour earlier. I let him out the side door, into the part of the yard that isn’t fenced because he has trouble navigating the back door steps.
He rolled in the dewy grass and then gave me that ol’ Golden-Retriever-side-eyed grin. The one that says “I’m not getting up and you have to sit here and wait with me.”
So, I went to get a book to read while Ben took a nap in the wet grass. The sheep were already hollering to go back into the barn, but we were all on Ben time. The sun worked its way high enough to burn off the wet dew, while the sheep and I waited. Dogs wreak havoc on schedules.
I read a story somewhere about a man who was always taking his dog with him to visit friends, or go camping. When the man knew the dog wouldn’t live much longer, he quit his job and took the dog to revisit all their favorite people and places. The story might not be true, I read it on the internet after all, but I want to believe we could live in a world where prioritizing spending time with an aging dog was normal.
Ben is a total homebody. So we don’t have any places to revisit. Still, the best thing about retiring last year was all the time I’ve had to spend with Ben in the past 12 months. I’ve watched the pleasure he takes in simply lying in the sun, or rolling in the wet grass, taking naps in the yard, and chasing bunnies he has no hope of ever catching. I see how delighted he is when he manages to roll all the way over. I’ve watched him enjoy just watching the sheep graze in the evening.
He has also developed an uncanny ability to sense when I’m getting ready to leave the house and decide that is the moment a trip outside to lie in the sunshine is required. If I was still working, I’d have been late to work every day this past year, but luckily I have the ability to throw the plan or schedule out the window. Ben is right – there is nothing more important to do right now then sit in the sunshine with him.
Matt Haig in The Comfort Book wrote “Get a routine baggy enough to live in” and Ben is working hard to teach me how. I’ve spent a lot of my life wanting to complete things, be done with tasks, to cross things off the to-do list. Wanting to have something done though, is not the same as enjoying doing it. Only now am I seeing that keeping a schedule, meeting a deadline, or crossing things off to-do lists might not actually be the same as living a life.
It may be easier for writers, retirees and dogs to have a “baggy” life. If there is anything that an old dog who has no to-do list can teach me though, it’s that a well-lived life comes from enjoying the moments along the way and not in hurrying to the finish line.
Priscilla Berggren-Thomas is a writer who lives in Homer.
