A new kind of checklist

I always have a checklist going in my head of things I need to do, people I need to contact, and places I need to go.

Monday through Friday, it's been a list of work-related tasks -- meetings to attend, reports to write, deadlines to meet. And during the weekend, it's been a list of home-related tasks -- food to buy, chores to do, find some place to eat out or listen to live music.

This past weekend, I was going through my mental home-related checklist, and on Sunday morning, as I looked at the day ahead I added a mental place holder to mow the lawn. If it doesn't get done on a Saturday during mowing season, the lawn has to get done on Sunday before I go back to work on Monday.

Then I paused ... wait, I don't have to mow the lawn on Sunday because I don't have a job to go to on Monday. I'm retired, so to speak. My Saturday and Sunday mentality can be extended to Monday, if I wish, or to Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. So I mowed the lawn on Monday.

I've never not had a job. As one of eight children growing up, we always had chores for which we received an allowance. Once I got to high school I had a job during the summers. And I had jobs through college, and was expected to get a job after graduating from college.

With just weeks to go before graduation, I received a letter from my father chastising me: "We're disappointed, your mother and I, that you haven't found a job yet." True, I hadn't been trying very hard, but after getting that letter I had my first newspaper job within four weeks of leaving school.

So this semi-retired life -- or whatever you want to call this transition -- will take some getting used to. I intend to do something in the way of a job, but it'll be something on my terms, something I have promised I would give myself time to think about.

In the meantime, I'm trying to re-gear my brain, re-orient my checklist, re-think the way I approach the day.

I'm very Type A, borderline obsessive-compulsive. I approached a day at work in a very orderly, very systemic way. The fact that in newspapers there are always deadlines to work toward required me over the years to think this way and approach certain tasks as Steps 1, 2 and 3 in order to achieve Goals A, B and C. In writing this column, for example, in order to meet deadline I had to have the germ of an idea by Sunday, be writing by Monday, and doing the final touches for a Tuesday morning newspaper deadline.

Since I'm not writing for a newspaper anymore and publishing to the internet, I don't have to follow those steps. Since I post this each Friday, I can give myself plenty of time for an idea to bubble, ferment and pop. Yet, here's how it went this week: Idea by Sunday, write on Monday, final draft on Tuesday. At this stage, I think, it feels like vacation, not yet like my re-defined life.

I will learn by experience that the work of semi-retirement isn't the work of going to an office each day to accomplish a set of tasks as dictated by a job description, action plans, and goals outlined in an annual evaluation. This is very much an open-ended proposition -- a vast open prairie to walk, not the defined paths of an office job.

I'm getting there. I waited until Monday to mow the lawn. Who knows -- next week I may wait until Tuesday.