For most of my life I have struggled with relaxing. I’m actually not sure what that means, and I’m sure it means different things to different people.
Take for example, you know how much we like to do puzzles. There has been a new puzzle on our table to complete for the past year, and we would have them on the table during the winter even before the pandemic.
We’ve been working on one of Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Today, I sat down with a timer set for 30-minutes. At the end of the timer I was going to get started on some baking projects I had on my mind. As I worked on it, for those 30-minutes I was fine.
Then the timer went off, but I wasn’t ready to walk away. Plus my husband had sat down to work on it as well. Even though I knew my time was up, and I even told him I needed to get going on other things but I just wasn’t in the mood, I stayed working on the puzzle.
All the time I’m sitting there, finding piece after piece, to the point we were able to finish it, what I wasn’t doing kept running through my mind. It was nice to just sit there focusing on a certain shape to place, and it was a little stressful as well with the projects on my mind.
I didn’t get up until it was finished. The closer we got to finishing, the harder it was to walk away. Is it even possible to walk away from finishing a puzzle when you see how few pieces are left?
Retirement is getting ever closer and I do long to be able to rise when I’d like, and the leisure time to just sit to finish a puzzle if I so chose. It got me to wondering though, when I retire, will I know how to relax? Will I actually be able to go through a day without a set agenda or to do list? How will I feel to just decide to make a cup of coffee before sitting to read the entirety of a book, with no other cares on my mind?
For those of you in retirement, have you truly been able to just relax?
Personal Reflections of a Middle-Aged Man 