Toting the weary load

I am close to my retirement, but not there yet. It has felt like a long final stretch since I came back from my sabbatical. People say, it's so soon, can you believe it, time goes by so fast, and the like. But to me time is going slowly. I don't mean to complain; it's just how it feels to me. Maybe because once I made the decision, my mind was halfway out the door while the rest of me has had to stay in place. My anxiety has been higher than ever during these weeks. I just went back to count up how long it's been since my sabbatical ended and it's about three and a half weeks! It feels much longer than that.

Now I have three more workdays ahead, and, fortunately, I will be able to work remotely. It's been so hard to get up and go to the office; I've really had to fight the heavy weariness. A couple times I was too weak to fight and simply could not get up in the morning. I'm baffled by this struggle. I did not expect this last month to feel like such a long, difficult time. Even the three days ahead of me this week feel like a huge challenge. I hope I can meet that challenge. At least it will be easier to get up and come to work at my computer in my living room than to get up and drive to the office in Bellingham.

When I was depressed some years back, probably around 2011 or 12, I got up with difficulty in the morning and told myself all I had to do was live through the day, just live through the day. I'm in a similar state now. For three more days.

The piece of a song lyric keeps coming into my mind, "Just a few more days for to tote the weary load." That's a line from a Stephen Foster song, another of those where it comes across as black people getting nostalgic for slavery. Pernicious. But from what I just read at the Bodleian (on my favorite podcast The Rest Is History, "the Bodleian" is code for Wikipedia) Foster actually was an abolitionist. Go figure. Anyway, I appropriate just the one line, not the rest of the song.

So. Just a few more days. And live through each day.

After that, time will probably fly by until I reach the day of my death. 

I want to get my house organized before then. As Isaiah said to Hezekiah, "Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die." Hezekiah got another 15 years after that. If I got another 15 years, I would be closer to the biblical fourscore than to the threescore years and ten. I'm already past threescore years. Oh, well. My death will be when it will be; all the days ordained for me were written in God's book before one of them came to be.

People ask me what my plans are for retirement. I tell them I plan to potter. Elizabeth von Arnim wrote, "Every now and then I leave [my] book on the seat and go and have a refreshing potter among my flower beds, from which I return greatly benefited, and with a more just conception of what, in this world, is worth bothering about, and what is not." That's my goal.

The Cool Sequestered Vale

 Augh! Now my sabbatical is over. That went by fast. 

I think the best part was the time I spent at my sister's house. Relaxing because there's nothing I need to do or be. I could just do what I wanted, read, do crosswords, do needlepoint, or watch Miss Marple shows with my sister. I was able to see her two California kids (her Washington kid is my upstairs neighbor) and grandkids. We ate out at some nice places. I spent a lovely evening with an old friend. I felt the love.

My motto as a career woman

Now it's the night before I go back to work. I'm a little anxious. Een beetje bang, as my great-grandfather used to say. Now it's back to get up at this time, not when you naturally wake up. Be here by this time and stay until another time. Act the part you've been assigned.

 

It's not all bad. The job I have now is pretty much the best one I've ever had, the most suited to my personality and talents. I only need to be back for about a month. I am retiring early in 2024. It's a bit early and therefore reduces my monthly Social Security payment compared to if I worked three to five more years. But I just don't have it in me. During covid isolation, I underwent a mental health crisis. It was pretty bad. The miracles of modern medicine got me back to functioning level, but I still am not fully equipped for the normal stresses of working life. So I'm quitting my job. It's the quiet life for me. Work (and before work school) has always been stressful for me. I've always wished I could stay home. Now I'm going to make my wish come true.

But first another month of work. On the night before, it feels like a long time stretching ahead of me, but, however long it takes, it will pass. A favorite poem of mine is Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard, and in that poem a favorite line is: Along the cool sequester'd vale of life / They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. That's what I'm looking for.

Sabbatical

I left work this evening, and I won't be going back until November 30th. I'm on sabbatical. When I started working at my current job, about 10½ years ago, they offered four weeks of "bonus vacation" after 10 years of employment, to be taken alongside (if I recall correctly) two weeks of your regular vacation, which you had to accrue. A few years ago, we unionized and now, in our collective bargaining agreement, we are eligible for "bonus vacation" after seven years, making it a true sabbatical. And I think it's a bit more flexible about how much of your regular vacation you have to accrue. The change came a bit late for me, but I'm not complaining. Sabbatical, bonus vacation, whatever, it's just great.

It will be seven and a half weeks off from work. Some of the time, I'll spend in California. In about a week, I'm going to drive down to Big Sur, California, and spend two weeks at the New Camaldoli Hermitage. As the word "hermitage" implies, it's a place for solitude, silence, reflection, and prayer. It's a remote location, where there's no internet access or mobile phone coverage. I am going to take along books, including a Bible, notebooks and pens, knitting and needlepoint. And a coffee maker. 

I'm consciously keeping my expectations modest about how it will be to spend that time there. I hope and trust it will be beneficial to my mental, emotional, and spiritual health—and indeed for my physical health as well—but I am not relying on any visions, ecstasies, or revelations. Besides, those might freak me out. I think it will be kind of like a spa for my soul.

After my time at the hermitage, I will drive to San Jose, California, and spend some time with my sister and her husband. That, too, I expect will be restful and restorative.

It ain't just a river in South America

I’ve been putting together a playlist for my own enjoyment. It consists of favorites of mine that I know well, which is fortunate because Amazon Music Prime will not let me listen to most of them. I buy them, generally at $1.29 per song, and download them to my own device, and then I listen to them.

I started Prime membership many years ago. For $25 a year, I got free shipping on my orders and access to certain movies and music. Now, Prime costs $139 per year. I get that inflation is a scourge right now, but today’s price is five times greater than the original price and, from my perspective, I get less for more.

At twilight

Some days are harder than others. This week, my days are feeling long and tiring. I find myself going back to a phrase I used years ago during a difficult time. When I got up in the morning, I would say to myself, “Live through the day. That’s all you have to do. Just live through the day.” 

Though the heart be weary, sad the day and long, still, at twilight, I’m here.

Huh?

Harry Belafonte died earlier this week. May he rest in peace. My sister posted on Facebook a link to him on the Muppet Show, singing the Banana Boat Song.

One day at work, a couple years ago, a co-worker used the word banana in conversation, and I was reminded of an article I'd recently read saying that Alan Arkin was one of the writers of the Banana Boat Song. I told him about that. First I had to help him know who Alan Arkin is. (My co-worker is young.) Then I had to sing a few bars of the song to call it to his mind. Then I told him that, contrary to what one might assume, Alan Arkin helped write it.*

My co-worker acknowledged (politely) that this was an interesting story but wondered why I told it. I told him because you said banana. Turns out he had actually said Indiana, not banana. Oh. 

So I said, well, there's a song about Indiana, too: Indiana Wants Me. He had never heard of it. (Again, young.) Later I sent him a link. Never say I have not contributed to that young man's education.

This mishearing thing happens not infrequently. It is cosmic payback. When my aged mother misheard things, she would ask, "Did you say such-and-such?" "Such-and-such" would be some ludicrous non sequitur (like banana instead of Indiana), and I would give her a look and answer, "Mom, is it likely I said such-and-such?" Now I'm saying "such-and-such" all over the place.

________________________________________________________________________________

*Looking this information up today, I find that Alan Arkin co-wrote a version of the Banana Boat Song, not the original song, when he was part of a folk-music group called the Tarriers. The song itself is a traditional Jamaican folk song, just as it seems to be.

Happy New Year and all that kind of stuff

Now the holidays have been and gone. Today was a company holiday for me. Since New Year's Day was a Sunday, we had Monday off. That's nice. Going back to work on January 2 feels rather abrupt. Christmas cheer, sentiment, carols, candles, family, and New Year's Eve noisemakers and champagne, followed by deranged sleeping on New Year's Day, and then BANG! It's a work day! Get up and get moving! So it was nice to have this 1-day cushion.

Not that I stayed up for the New Year this time around. I thought I might, but around 9:00 p.m. I felt sleepy so went to bed. When my mom was older, she would say she could celebrate the New Year at 9:00 p.m. Pacific time because at that moment it was midnight in the time zone where she was born, on the East Coast. I was born in Seattle, so that doesn't work for me.

My fearless defender from things that go boom in the night.

As it happens, I did wake up around midnight because people in the area were sending up fireworks, and my dog Benedict felt obligated to bark at them. But I didn't really wake up fully and was soon asleep again.

I'm glad that two weeks from today we'll have another holiday (Martin Luther King Day). That will ease us in a tad more easily than an endless-seeming stretch to Presidents Day in February. I seem to recall, from my time studying at Regent College, that Canadians get a Monday holiday pretty much every month. That sounds just jim-dandy to me. We need breaks. I've seen a meme about how medieval serfs got rest days for enough religious holy days so that they had more days off than the average American employee. 

This spring, I will turn 62. That is the youngest age at which one can start receiving Social Security retirement. I don't think I'll retire on the dot, but I will always be conscious that I could retire any time I want to. Actually, I want to, but when will it be propitious? I have some major purchases I want to make before I reduce my income so drastically: a love seat for my living room, two new doors for the room I have dedicated to being a library (with windows in the doors, so the southern exposure can benefit the adjoining areas), a screen door so I can get fresh air when it's pleasant outside, a new dishwasher because the one I have is kaput, a new thing over the stove (what's it called?) because the ventilation fan in mine is broken. Possibly an update to the pump system down here that sends my waste water up to street level. 

Geez, maybe I'll be working till I'm 95. But I'll always know I could retire if I want to. I heard a speaker once who said you should have a Plan B for your income so that you don't feel trapped in your Plan A employment.