In regular work, weekends are commonly longed for. By Friday afternoon, one's batteries are severely depleted and tauntingly the weekend lies just ahead, stretching out for miles like a fertile valley you will take your time to cross. The weekend represents freedom and respite from the workaday world.
But every Monday you discover it was all just a delusion. You are back on the work treadmill and the weekend just gone flew past so quickly you almost missed it, Groundhog days for years and years.. When in work you never learn the truth about weekends. and how deceptive they are. Blink and you miss them.
But when you are retired, it's like you are living in a never-ending weekend. Saturday and Sunday are not much different from the other days of the week. When Friday afternoon approaches there's no sense of relief when the hooter goes or the bell rings.
And yet, I still remember. Getting home at five to five thirty on a Friday, dropping off my work bag and wandering down to "Hamid's" to order our regular Friday curry. Then I would nip into "The Banner Cross Hotel" for two pints of Tetley's bitter before picking up the curry and heading home.
Shirley and our two kids loved starting the weekend that way too. However, the work bag buzzed insistently in the corner, reminding me there were always weekend work jobs to be done. Looking back, that didn't seem fair - to have work infecting my weekends and family life in the certain knowledge that there was never enough time to get it all done.
Oh, I don't miss that. I don't miss that at all.
I kept a journal for about 10 years. I can't believe how much I did.
ReplyDeleteLike looking back on someone else's life.
DeleteI am lucky to have just a four-day work week, so every weekend in three days and I can do some work things, but still have a nice time off.
ReplyDeleteYou are indeed lucky Bob!
DeleteI remember that I was always exhausted by the time Friday night came. And Sunday night I'd get that anxious feeling again. After I retired I rejoiced on Sunday night for a very long time and sometimes still do even though it has been several years now since I went out to work.
ReplyDeleteYour experience seems to mirror my own Deb!
DeleteI don't work Wednesday or Friday so the weekend comes early for me and there's a break mid -week which I can use to catch up the things that would be put aside for the weekend.
ReplyDeleteIt's a less pressured lifestyle but I tend to be out of the loop at work and of course a 3 day week means 3/5 the income as well.
You deserve a relaxed retirement: teaching is one of those jobs that never quite goes away and it boggles my mind that my daughter Briony receives emails from students any time of the day or night. Back in the dark ages when i was at school and college, you asked for help in school hours or waited for Monday
Thankfully, none of my pupils had my e-mail address. As the mother of a teacher you understand better than most the toll that teaching demands - unless of course you are a P.E. teacher.
DeleteBriony started in history, moved to PE and has added CAFS to become the first person at her school to teach Community and Family Studies. I think is quite an achievement for a new teacher
DeleteMany was the time in my working years that I wondered: why am I doing this for 5 days a week just so I can do what I want for two?
ReplyDeleteIt's the wrong ratio isn't it?
DeleteIsn't it odd that being retired, there is still not enough time to get everything done? How did we ever find time to go to work?
ReplyDeleteIn recent years, I have become quite lazy in relation to how I used to be. I put things off and then put them off again.
DeleteIt is the thing I have enjoyed most since retiring..that feeling of being unshackled from my desk and computer. The luxurious sense of freedom.
ReplyDeleteEven after fifteen years, I have not lost that feeling.
DeleteI don't believe employees should be contacted after working hours, except perhaps for a dire emergency. As River above has alluded to, everything expands to fill the time. But that's fine. I like time to plan what I will do and when I do it.
ReplyDeleteI envied people whose work did not follow them around. With the working week over, they could just walk away till Monday.
DeleteI like my work, and so do not really dread Mondays. I also do not have to work on weekends. Instead, most weekends feel like a mini holiday, when I travel to O.K. and we start off with our customary Friday evening meal of salad, bread, cheese and a good bottle of wine. I can really switch off there and hardly think of work, once we have updated each other on what Friday was like or what we‘ll be up to the following week.
ReplyDeleteOf course I know how fortunate I am.
I was like one of those cartoon prisoners with a lead ball chained to his foot. The work never went away - even in the holidays. You are indeed lucky that you can just "switch off" at the weekend.
DeleteIt (the ability to switch off) was a learning process that took several years, my main motivation being what I saw happening to my Dad. He was dutiful to the extreme, and would go to work even with his head under his arm, so to speak. He gave a lot more than he received, and it took its toll on him and our family. I do not want to end up like that, and since I still have about 11 years until retirement, I want to spend them as balanced as I can.
DeleteYour post captures for me what I love about retirement. No Sunday night feelings of "I didn't get this done, or I didn't get that done", with a mountain of papers to grade that I didn't touch over the weekend. As a teacher, sometimes I would work all weekend on grading papers just to keep up!
ReplyDeleteI miss the people at work, and every other Friday (payroll) but I don't miss the politics and headaches. It is helpful to take a day off from being retired now and then, give yourself a day out.
ReplyDeleteTeachers and educators never truly get time off. There is always work to be done. My mother was a teacher and i can remember her grading papers at the dining room table. Or doing report cards or making lesson plans. I can imagine that you always had work to do at home too.
ReplyDeleteNo. I am sure you do not miss your job in the school system at all.
I'm impressed by the two pints at the pub before picking up the curry. Did you and Shirley wash that down with glasses of milk?
ReplyDeleteI don't miss work. Even though I am retired, I still find that I am pretty lazy on Saturdays and Sundays as I always think of them as days of rest even though I can rest any day of the week now (and often do!)
ReplyDeleteI feel bad for employees now a days who can be reached day and night through their mobile phones. My daughter gets work texts and calls 24/7 and I always tell her - don't reply!
Oh, fine, rub it in! (Though I get what you mean about weekends losing their significance because it feels that way to me during summer break. Which, like a weekend, goes by way too fast and in my case is about to end.)
ReplyDelete