Grumblings...

About halfway through my first year of retirement from teaching, I'm unexpectedly feeling discouraged by my life. People in the past have quipped, "Sucks, getting old!" and I chuckled as I nodded in agreement, but suddenly that message has taken on a more genuineness for me.

For years I've expressed the belief in balance, that things balance out in the long run, and I still believe that concept to be true. Lately, as soon as something uplifting or happy presents itself to my life, another something appears almost immediately to take away the sweet taste I'd been granted. And I'm not happy that this is happening.

Take retirement income: Social Security and NH Teacher Retirement, both of which I've contributed to for the duration of my 40 year career. Other than the $97 glitch made by the Feds providing the wrong chart to NH Retirement to determine January's pay, that benefit has been a flawless and easy process, and I've been paid on time each month. Social Security? Not so much. Since August 2012 I've received two paychecks from them, even though I officially retired on June 30, 2012 and requested that my SS benefits begin for the month of July. I have a folder more than an inch thick with bank statements, letters of verification, notes, and letters from SSA that continue to mistake my actual situation and that continue to deny me 4 7/8 months of benefits that are legally due to me.

Another issue is this aging body. Teeth, skin, blood pressure, spine.... the list is long of parts that are becoming difficult and needing special (aka time consuming and expen$ive) attention. I have to admit that I probably should have been taking better care of myself, even though I'm no boozer, druggie, or real abuser of food. Sure, I've eaten what I wanted, when I wanted, for most of my life, but now my aging metabolism giggles every time I stuff a chocolate covered cherry or an extra piece of pepperoni pizza into my mouth, and I'm finding that I'm wearing the consequences and carrying them around with me 24/7. Some of the current problems are linked together, so if I were to get up off my lardbutt regularly and be more physically active, I could cross an item or two off the long list, so I accept some of the responsibility. The rest.... well, I feel as though I don't really deserve it.

Being away from the workplace has opened my eyes a little wider than I thought would happen with retirement. I have a different perspective. I can see what I did and didn't do more clearly. Decisions and plans made by others for specious reasons seem even more like folly. People who expressed and lived friendship while I was there now apparently need my physical presence to remind them that I am.... or was... part of their lives. The fallacy of open and constant communication between schools and community is painfully noticeable.

Which leads me to the reason why all of the above has become so much more prominent: without the need of my brain to focus on the many and constant aspects of my job, it now has time to be aware of, register, ponder, and worry about each and every one of those aforementioned topics. Now I have time to make appointments unhindered by the 8 hour blocks of time spent at work five days a week. Now I have alone time to think about me, to look in the mirror, to notice the aches and the flaws that have probably been there for a while or even all along, but they'd been low on the priority list during my working years. There's no one here to bounce ideas off of, to interrupt a train of thought or offer mitigating or encouraging comments. I notice the people who do make an effort to stay in touch with me, face to face, through email or Facebook, versus those who expressed friendship in the past but who are surprised to see me out in public. (Once in a while, at seeing their reactions, I wonder if they thought I'd died when I disappeared from their daily view, even though logic, and their presence at my retirement events prove otherwise.) This virtual step back from the previous part of my life has given me the space to see and understand it and my current life with a greater degree of impartiality than I'd had when I was employed and among my peers on a daily basis.

The temptation is to withdraw further, not just to see who seeks me but to back away from the disappointments and the situations in which I was formerly essential but now am not. The other option is to throw myself with more vigor into what I love, what makes me happy, what's important to me. To do that, I need to acknowledge what those things are, and then embrace them with more vigor and determination. My excuse for not taking the second option has been the season. Winter, for me, is not a welcoming time of year: it takes more energy to dress for the weather, the daylight is shorter and paler than in warmer seasons, and I don't like being cold. They're all silly obstacles, but they're there. Or they have been. With the length of daylight increasing, and having vented about some of the irritants here, I think I'm more ready to cope with the days ahead in a more positive frame of mind. Yes, the government, my physical self, and other issues are giving me problems, but if I keep pecking away at them persistently, I can claim more control over them, experience some successes, and feel a bit more in charge. That's my goal.