I started shopping for a different planner, but there are way too many to choose from. So many formats. So many "dashboards" (a candidate, along with "metrics," for most overused business word ever). I'm not sure how a paper calendar page, no matter how complex its layout, can be called a "dashboard," but that's a question for another day. Meanwhile, I'll probably just stick with the planner that I bought. C'est bien.
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| There's a lot going on on this page, isn't there? And it's all in French, and too small to read. |
Anyway, French or English, a planner is necessary because I have a lot of stuff to keep track of. I'm busy morning to night, and I don't want to stop. I get anxious when I stop moving. So I keep moving.
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The early 50s are an interesting age to be. I have friends who are just a few years older, and they're winding down. They're not quite ready to retire, but they're planning for it, and not just in a vague, pie-in-the-sky, "someday when I retire" way. They're making concrete arrangements, and picking the actual dates when they'll just stop working.
Sometimes when I'm tired, I think that it would be nice to just retreat from the world; and I wish, just for a moment, that I was also winding down. Then I think about the implications of not having enough to do, and not being needed every day, and the whole idea of leisure loses its charm. I see the TV commercials with the soon-to-retire couples (the woman always appears to be a decade younger than her husband) meeting with their financial adviser and planning for 30 or so years of travel and gardening and boating and beach-sitting and all of the other things that people are supposed to want to do during retirement, and I just can't imagine myself embarking on a life of full-time rest.
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via GIPHY
Well, maybe.
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When Social Security and the idea of retirement as a lifestyle were invented average life expectancy was pretty low compared to now. The idea of Social Security was that if you survived past 65, then you probably wouldn't be strong enough to keep working, and there should be some sort of safety net that would allow you to spend your last few years in relative comfort and security. And I'm all for this. I'm human, so I like comfort and security. I also like travel and beach-sitting as much as the next person,. But I don't think that we're meant to spend so much time idle. People live into their 80s now, but they still retire in their 60s. Beyond the obvious strain that 20-plus years of retirement puts on a system that was designed to support two to five years at most, there's the larger question of what we as human beings were created for. As much as any person might enjoy decades of carefree downtime, it's probably not what we're meant to do.
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I like working. I like having something to do every day that's important and meaningful. I like making money. I like making friends with the people I work with, and having people to commiserate with when things go badly, and to celebrate with when things go well. I like taking care of my family. I don't want to stop doing those things now or any time soon.
Plus, I have a kid starting college next year.
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This started with something about a planner, didn't it? I don't know how it turned into a manifesto for delayed retirement and productive old age. I almost included a side trip into the (real, I promise you) world of food nostalgia. That's a whole post in itself. Something to look forward to, n'est-ce pas?
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