Rudbeckia. I am not taking all that many pictures lately as I have mostly just been going to the garden or downtown. I take lots of pictures at the garden. I find it useful to check back and see what was happening, oh say, two years ago. These black-eyed susans are not in my garden but nearby and this is the best picture I have taken in this last week according to my own quirky sense of best.
I paced myself much better this last week than the week before and am much less tired (and sore, after 8 classes with a focus on hamstrings, I could barely get up from a chair this time last week). This week it was shoulders, elbows, and wrists. Those areas are more manageable for me even though they are nowhere near as strong as I would like. Those joints feel well-used but not sore.
Next week the theme is ankles. As I had some students who said the shoulder work was a little strong this week, this gives them time to recover, I am shifting the focus downward. It is kind of weird that I don’t write about teaching much here at all even though it is the primary focus and anchor of my life right now.
A bunch of League people have been on vacation these last few weeks. Decision maker type people. People with portfolios type people. They kind of left stuff for me to do without kind of sort of running that by me and I am not handling that as gracefully as might be ideal. It has been a struggle; there has been dread.
It is almost as if, without realizing it, people were trying to convince me that even though there are aspects of this nonprofit gig that I enjoy and feel good about, I can’t wait for the day to get out of Dodge and let the whole thing go.
You know how you have a job you are planning on leaving and you think oh, I could keep this and work part time, wouldn’t that be nice, to do the things I like and am good at like consulting but leave all the hard, icky, decision making, not enough support but all the blame stuff, to someone else?
I am kind of at that fantasy stage right now, 10 months out from my term ending.
By the time I get there, I think I am going to be ready to walk away quietly but firmly from the whole darn thing. At least I have the heart stuff under better control after the big night in the emergency room scare.
Our now former League President, (who I miss terribly in the role) did that, turned off her email, turned in her credit card the morning after her term ended and got on a cross Canada train. She has since been to a non-fiction writer’s workshop in Port Angeles, is currently taking a ceramics class, and is planning a week-long birding trip through London next month.
My goal is to manage the time I have left in my term in a way that is not too hard on my health. I don’t know if I am going to succeed. I may have to bail early. It is tempting. I am sad because I believe in the mission of the organization deeply, but at this point I am like get your act together people.
I have learned a lot about myself here and I guess in some ways this is the learning curve of modern retirement. I got the second career part right with the teaching. I got a fail on both the group hiking club and the political non-profit. I am still okay with Walt’s group, even though it has its challenges as well.
Nothing like this.
Speaking of Walt’s group. I received a package in the mail on Thursday that I wasn’t expecting and when I opened it there was a bargain bin copy of a book by the American humorist from 1995 called Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys.
I was telling the guys a few weeks back that I was reading this funny fantasy book from an Australian writer Daniel O’Malley called Royal Gambit that I thought was quite well written and thoughtful. I said it was the third in a trilogy. A couple of the guys wrote the name and author down because none of them had heard about it.
The next day I get an email from Walt saying that the book I was reading was the 4th in the series, not the 3rd.
Okay, fine.
I replied that I had read them all and was a little vague on the number of them as it had been a few years but enjoyed them all, and he responded that he and his partner are reading humor and enjoying it and that nothing made him happier than when his partner was reading across the room and laughed out loud. He recommended Terry Pratchett and Dave Barry. Cody, the mansplainer AI also recommended Terry Pratchett.
Anyway, after that exchange, Walt took it upon himself to send me this guide to guys. He says chapter 4 is particularly funny.
His heart is in the right place. I do get that. And who knows maybe I will get some insights from the book.
Once I find the time to read it.
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