One of my golf buddies worked at the course as a volunteer in exchange for playing privileges. But then he got uppity and got fired. As he shared the story with me, I realized I’m probably unemployable at this point. Not that I’m uppity, but my bullshit meter is pegged. Oh, and my inside voice is now my outside voice. You can see where this is going.
Lucky me! While I salute those who want and/or need to keep working, I was born to retire. People ask what we do all day. Like working for the man is all there is. Don’t they know there’s a whole life beyond what we do or did for a living? I’m not saying I’m productive, but my dance card is full.
As I wrote on my About Me profile, “My full-time job is to take care of myself, be kind to others, enjoy simple pleasures and indulge in creative pursuits. I especially like to play golf, walk, swim, cook, read, write, watch TV, listen to music, make art and grow cannabis.”
Deep Water Running
I’ve added a couple of new things. In addition to regularly swimming laps, I now do what is called deep water running. In this exercise, one wears a floatation belt and mimics jogging. Your head is above water, and your feet don’t touch the bottom. You do travel a bit, but it’s easy to maneuver to keep yourself in roughly the same area.
It’s great because it’s something you can do in your backyard pool. The downside is that it’s kind of boring. However, I’ve noticed a huge improvement in my chronic lower back pain. I don’t know if it’s strengthening my core or what, but I must figure out a way to keep this up all year. It’s that good.
There are other exercises you can do in the deep end, and I’m beginning to explore those. I tried cross-country skiing, but that one seems to aggravate an old knee injury. So, he got chopped.
If you’re going to try this out, my suggestion is to go slow. No more than 10 minutes at first to see which body parts react. With running, I did feel a reaction in my back at first, but it wasn’t pain. It was more like muscle fatigue, but that has passed.
Learning to draw
My last piece of art motivated me to try and get better at drawing. For many years, I’ve said if I could draw, I’d draw cats golfing. Sure, there’s the lingering question about why cats golf, but it’s also a thing I have … a fixation.
Surprisingly, the art world is largely devoid of golfing cats. Finally, I said, well, shit, I guess I’ll just have to teach myself.
I started with the Ben Hogan classic book, The Modern Fundamentals of Golf, which is finely illustrated. I practiced drawing the humans and then tried to convert them to cats. I also Googled golf clip art and copied some of those positions. It’s still hit or miss, but I find this activity disturbingly satisfying.
For next steps, I ordered a book from Amazon on how to draw cats. A bit of professional help, as it were. You would be shocked by the huge selection! My tribe is out there … I just haven’t found them yet. I’m also trying to translate the drawing to my woodburning. It’s hard to get the detail, so I’ve had to make some accommodations.
Overall, I have a lot to learn about drawing. I’m not sure where to start. There are boatloads of books and websites on the subject, and it’s a bit overwhelming. I’m thinking basics. Special pencils? Paper?
As with all things retirement and maybe life if I had to do it all over again, I think it’s important to resist the impulse to seek quantifiable results and simply enjoy the experience of seeing how it all unfolds.
Perhaps you would enjoy looking at the art and creations by Laurel Burch.
What a great suggestion! Her cats are amazing and fit in nicely with the way I do the wood pieces. Thank you so much for sharing such great inspiration!!
Look at those cats on the board! You’ve got this already. And although I never got around to commenting on your last piece of artwork, it’s apparent that you also have a great command of color and design.
I’ve always wanted to be able to draw better. I took drafting in college, and color and design, and finally, one of those drawing on the right side of the brain classes. In that class, I finally learned how to draw reasonably well, but oh so very slow I am. And tentative. Those who already knew how to draw, improved by leaps and bounds. So basically, I learned that I’m not a natural artist when it comes to drawing. Like your sister perhaps, I found my artistic expression in quilting, and in sewing clothes, spinning yarn, knitting, and embroidery. I love fiber and fabric and so that is my joy. And the only one it needs to please, is me.
You however, do have artistic talent both in drawing and in figuring out how to place objects in space and oh that color sense! I’m really looking forward to seeing where you go with this.
And beyond that, your approach to retirement (and life in general) is very satisfying. I’m sure that it’s one of the reasons I so enjoy reading your articles.
You are too kind! Although I do rather like the way the cats turned out on the wood. Took me forever. Lots of erasing. That’s one of the things I like about wood. I’m still on the lookout for a local drawing class.
It’s interesting about the fabric art. As you noted, that is my sister’s thing. She’s also very good at math, while I suck at math. I wonder if there’s a connection, because I also can’t sew much at all. Quilting reminds me of geometry, which I tried hard at but failed. The teacher gave me an F, but I did ask for a lot of help along the way, so I didn’t think that was fair. Using my verbal skills, I explained that I could have skipped class entirely and gotten an F. I at least deserved a D-. He agreed and changed my grade.
Good negotiation with your geometry teacher. I was good in math and in music which is also pretty much math based. My love though, was in literature and English. However, it’s interesting that no matter what job I had, I was always pushed into the numbers, from being taught to keep the books at the music store and music school I worked at in my early 20s, to managing complex interlocking spreadsheets at my final job in my 60s.
I got my degree in Liberal Arts (took 27 years) in a very progressive short term residency/distance learning college program based in VT after being totally miserable taking business classes that my employers were willing to pay for. In the end I had to go where my heart was. I tried to talk my employer into paying for an MFA for me since one of the things I did was to write procedures, but my verbal skills weren’t as good as yours. They would only approve an MBA so I never went any further in my college career. I was more interested in sinking my own money into my retirement fund than paying for further education at that point.
I abandoned my computer (I only use an iPad) when I retired. I said that I wanted out of my head and into my hands. Perhaps the joke is on me because quilting, sewing, knitting and weaving all involve calculations. But they also include fiber and fabric and color and artistic skills. That makes the difference.
Wow. This is fantastic. You’ve totally outdone yourself yet again.
Can’t go wrong with cats, right?
You made me smile thinking about golfing cats! I don’t golf. I’m more a dog person than cat person. But your approach to better draw golfing cats just cracks me up. (A tribe of golfing cat artists?) And yes, I agree, it should always be about enjoying the experience.
Cats always make me smile, so I’m glad to pass it along.
Going to take your first paragraph and run with it. I assume your friend got fired for not putting up with something he thought was unjustifiable. Would love to hear the rest of that story. And you decided you were no longer employable because you no longer put up with that #$%^%$#. You could do a whole column on that subject alone. Why don’t you?
I am not only no longer employable but realized I haven’t been for years. The absolute BEST part of retirement is no more workplace power struggles. I struggled for a lifetime with keeping my lip buttoned through resentments, but in the last ten years the buttonhole has disappeared pretty completely. I can remember at least two bosses who hired me for various duties but then snuck in later that I was supposed to ALSO clean the toilet so they wouldn’t have to pay janitorial services. Why would I mind, I was just a woman and genetically predisposed to love cleaning toilets. (Okay, that last part they didn’t say out loud, but the implication was clear.)
I have also set free a number of relationships that were not serving me. Well, there really is a point buried in here. I’ll let you dig it out. 😀
According to my buddy, he let two groups play together, adding up to a sixsome, which is normally not allowed. The manager saw it, and she called him on it. He refused to apologize, basically telling the manager it was more important to make the customer happy than to abide by her rules. Not good.
I try not to dwell on the horrible work stories, and there are many. Your toilet story reminded me of a time when I was between real jobs and was working off the books for an entrepreneur who owned a bunch of strip mall businesses. He asked me to organize his office, which was awful. He was so pleased, he asked me to clean his house. I said no and got serious about finding gainful employment.
We already have Tiger Woods so why not a kitty cat golfer? I am in complete agreement about life in retirement. Once I left work, I have never looked back. What do I do all day? Whatever I want.
I did look back at first, but it didn’t take long for me to leave it all behind. Go us! Doing what we want!!
What s great post! Had me laughing out loud. I love how you are so interested in pursuing all sorts of interesting new pursuits! And I absolutely love cats. Cannot wait to see your renderings of them golfing.
For some reason the drawings did not show up in your post until I posted my comment. The golfing cats are wonderful!
Sorry about that. I’m glad you like the cats. I seriously have been talking about this forever but didn’t have the confidence to try. Doing art in general made me more daring!
I have never understood how people struggle to fill their time. I mean other than practical limitations (such as financial or physical) I genuinely cannot see it. If I didn’t have to work, I’d be happy as a sand boy filling my time with all the stuff I don’t have time to do while I work for a living.
Mind you, I never thought of golfing cats so you win that round by a mile 😀 😀 Looking forward to seeing them appear in more of your art work.
Work definitely gets in the way of life!
I’m surprising myself and may also be “born to retire.” I have been very happily keeping myself occupied these past few months. If something comes up where I have the opportunity to do some consulting that would be fine, but at this point, I’m not sure I’m going to actively pursue this option. Deep water running sounds interesting, and something to look into for the Fall when we move our activities back inside. Your thoughts on drawing reminded me of trips to Cape Cod each summer. My father loved to sketch and paint. Each year the two of us would go to an early morning drawing class, if my memory serves, at the Marconi State Park. I used to love those mornings.
I love the story about you and your father on Cape Cod!
My brief foray into consulting did not last. Like you, I might accept the right opportunity, but I’m not actively pursuing it, either. After five years, I already feel my skills are somewhat obsolete.