The Rhythm of Me

Since it’s the last day of the year, I thought I would write about time and how our perception of it changes depending on where we are in life. Time has changed considerably for me since retiring from full-time work in September. Since then, I have been working part time for only a few hours per week. My part-time job ends today, so I will be officially unemployed as of the New Year. It’s a strange feeling to say the least, one that I still haven’t gotten used to.

When I tell people that, they look at me. They don’t understand what I have to get used to. Freedom? Control over my own schedule? How difficult is that? they ask. They see retirement as giving me time to do the things I’ve always wanted. In fact, most people smile at the news and are genuinely happy for me. Actually, I am happy for me, but I am also somebody who has spent his adult life analyzing the reason for things, both as a teacher and writer. That can lead to disappointment, including how I experience retirement (see I, Ruinator).

Naturally, I have been analyzing this newfound freedom. First of all, I have to admit that it really is freedom. To say otherwise would be kvetching for kvetching’s sake, which I am not above doing, but not this time. Besides, I am acutely aware of Joe Rogan’s claim that his life mission is to tame his “inner bitch.” I identify with that fully. Actually, I wish more people did.

Second, I do have control over my schedule, more or less. I don’t have to go to the office or attend zoom meetings, which are the administrator’s equivalent of grading papers and sitting through faculty meetings, but other things fill the void, rushing in where angels dread to tread. For example, unpacking from my recent move, ordering household items like a kitchen table and chairs, and responding to people who want my attention now that I am retired and have all this time on my hands.

This presents an interesting paradox, since my new social status, which is responsible for all this free time, creates the condition that makes its own demise possible, even inevitable. Well, inevitable for most people but not for me. It reminds me of the ouroboros, the mythical snake that eats its own tail.

Third, I measure time differently. I now experience it slowed down and focused. By focused I mean I am no longer concerned primarily with other people’s needs, desires, or demands. I don’t mean that in a selfish way but in the simple things I think about when I open my eyes in the morning and lie there, knowing that I do not have to be anywhere and pretend to be interested in something that isn’t worth my time.

However, this different focus has had some interesting side effects. I’ll walk into a room and forget the reason. I’ll brush my teeth and do it again twenty minutes later. Did I lock the car? Better go out and check. I read recently about an old man who went to the bank buck naked. Turns out he thought he had dressed and didn’t realize he was naked. Charitably, the cops wrapped him in a warm blanket and drove him home.

It’s not just forgetting. Words fail, attention drifts, thoughts wander. I nod at people a lot. This isn’t from a medical condition. I haven’t been hit in the head that many times sparring. No, time is warping. It’s changing, and my rhythm is changing with it. It’s as if time has expanded and my individual rhythm is slowing to accommodate the expansion.

In writing about the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan, Nobel Prize winning journalist, Svetlana Alexievich, quotes a soldier who had returned home and yearned to get back to the fighting. “I miss the rhythm,” he says. “That rhythm, the one for hurling myself into a fight. For taking risks, for defending something. Even now I want to go back, but I don’t know what I’d feel there.” He had lost his rhythm, his “edge” at home and thought he could regain it only by returning to the front.

I, too, am searching for my rhythm. It may be that we each need to find our rhythm and the environment that matches it. That might be part of what goes into a life well lived, regardless of where that life is lived. There’s a New Year’s resolution.

Image credits: feature by Alex Lion; armchair by Kevin Ku. See also, Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1989), 198-99. Want more? Go to Robert Brancatelli. The Brancatelli Blog is a member of The Free Media Alliance, which promotes “alternatives to software, culture, and hardware monopolies.”