Dear LPG, 

I wonder if readers can identify with a mood that I seem to wake up with more and more often in the mornings now that not being influenced by the workforce’s compulsion to keep up and reach life’s objectives on time is supposed to have been lifted from my life?  I am talking about that feeling that so many of us get as we near the age of retirement.  Whatever the negative aspects most of us had about being retired were, I think that the thing I was most looking forward to being was not being tied down to all those time limits and date lines that a working life forces upon us.   

Can you remember that first day of retirement when you woke up one Monday morning with the thought that you can absolutely please yourself when it comes to what you want to do and how long you need to take before you get it done? In my experience the saddest thing about it is that before most of us know it, we then impose a whole new lot of time constraints that are usually the result of our own making.

We put those time restraints right back there while trying to please our friends and family and fit in all those retirement goals of our own with the rest of the world’s expectations and, before we know it, we are right back where we started; on another of life’s treadmills that is travelling just a bit too fast for some of us.   

I strongly support adding another task to your already full schedule, perhaps today is the day to stop, evaluate just how much you have promised to do and how long you have given yourself to achieve those goals before working out just how long you really need to get it all done.  The secret could be rescheduling some of them.

We need to learn to pace ourselves as we get older and, perhaps fitting some regular time in to our weekly schedules, to really assess where we are up to before postponing some of those self-imposed time-commitment tasks could well be the answer… 

AF, Crofton Park