Retirement

Not really, but a glimpse of one possible future.

My job is somewhat on hiatus.  We are limited in what we can teach and there is no grading or face to face, so that has cut down significantly on the hours where we can be doing anything productive.

Household projects are the order of the day.  Installing a custom stock on a rifle; refinishing the garage door; rebuilding the engine of one of my Harley's; cleaning the house; posting stuff on the internet; playing the piano on a regular basis (since that was my justification for buying it); are just a few of the projects I have going.  There is also woodwork stripping which continues to be a long term project that I do infrequently and told myself I'd get to if we were shut down for a while.

Playing Dungeons and Dragons has taken a hit.  It doesn't have to though.  Twice a month I am in a campaign on Fantasy Grounds, so the campaign that I run could theoretically move there.  If only I knew how FG worked.  Oh, another project that is taking much more time than I thought.  Thankfully the guy that runs the current online campaign has offered to help me get it set up as well as let me use his modules, which are not cheap but are necessary (rough estimate about $50 to get running properly).

Did I mention that my computer fan kicks on all the time and my laptop seems to be overheating regularly?  It doesn't seem to be doing it this morning so I suspect that some combination of time and programs is causing the problem.  It may just need the cooling fan to be re-glued with Thermal Paste but guess what is unavailable on Amazon until sometime in late April.  If you said Thermal Paste you would be correct.  Not sure how "stuff to fix your computer so that you can continue to work from home" is not essential, but there it is.

Then the phone starts ringing.  "Can you come fix my Harley?".  Of course I can.  I have lots of time.

Yesterday, as I drove home from an unfinished six hour job that I thought would take four or five to be completely done, I started to freak out.  There isn't enough time in the day to get all this stuff done.  When am I supposed to do the school stuff, the Harley's, the household projects, not to mention setting up my campaign on FG so that we can relax a bit, aaaaaaagh!

So this morning I took a deep breath and wrote a list.  That is what I do.  I make lists.  I love lists.  I can put everything down on a piece of paper or an electronic file (I use Colornote on my phone).  Once it is all listed I can just pick one and do it.  When it's done I get to cross it off.  If I think of something I need to do that is not on the list I will even just do it and then add it to the list, for the sole purpose of getting to cross it off.  The list gets shorter and I feel better.

Meanwhile, however, the fan on my laptop just kicked on for no apparent reason and then went off again.  I think it's the fan.  I have a Solid State Drive (SSD) so I shouldn't be hearing it spinning up.

I guess it's time to hit post and shut down.  I'll go work on something on my list.

What did this have to do with retirement?  Well, nothing really but I could see retirement not being nearly as relaxing as it might seem.