It's not that I'm not going to work ever again, but I'm never going to have work scheduled on a weekday/weekend schedule once classes end this coming Thursday. That means this is my last chance to feel the feeling that is The Weekend. Not that I'm not working this weekend. I am. But in my own way, on my own schedule.
IN THE COMMENTS: Rob links to this:
December 3, 2016
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Everyone elses schedules do not change, so it is still the weekend. You will now be a member of a superfluous minority and must learn to adapt.
The seven day weekend. Welcome to the world of the retired who play all of the time.
Congratulations!!!
Enjoy Meade even more than before!
Go get'em Tiger!
It's common for retirees to wonder where they ever found time to work.
I can't wait until you take up yoga.
Congratulations - my sister is turning 66 next week, her last day of work as a registered nurse was yesterday - almost 40 years in the same place. Her son is a graduate of UW Law school - he had you as a professor. Too busy with work and a young family, so he doesn't spend much time on the internet, so he had never heard of this blog.
More time for Colorado! I recommend Telluride.
It takes a while to break the weekday/weekend habit.
"Welcome to the world of the retired who play all of the time."
I've been retired 20 years and worked five days in the past two weeks. I drove 728 miles to do so. Retirement is easy.
I like days to be equal to other days.
That has been the situation in the summer months. The classes have only been 28 weeks out of the year. So I'm pretty used to the feeling of weekday/weekend day equality. I'm just permanently giving up the experience of the weekend.
As for "everybody else" living by the weekend... I'm not that tracked into what other people other than Meade are doing day by day. I'm pretty independent about that. But in my experience, people like to do things on weekday evenings. Maybe not stay up late, but I can't stay up late. I'm so much of a morning person.
It's a little sad after retirement when weekends no longer are special. Nah, I lied, it's great!
"What is a weekend?"
"I can't wait until you take up yoga."
I loathe being stuck in a room where someone is telling me what to do.
Yoga would absolutely not be my thing.
I have plenty of physical activities: walking, paddle boarding, road and mountain biking, ice skating, cross-country skiing. I just want to maintain my ability to do that. I'm not looking for more.
tcrosse said...
It's common for retirees to wonder where they ever found time to work.
Yep, I know the feeling. Exercise 3 days a week, band practice on 1, a demanding Siberian Husky who wants a 3 mile walk once a day, commercial fishing when my buddy calls, trying to check a friend's attempted proof at Fermat's Last Theorem. It all adds up.
I'm not retired, but when I have prolonged time off--as during a two-week vacation--I start losing track of what day is which, as I have no reason to think of what must be done any particular day, or to count how many days until the weekend.
The weekend today means the usual radio shows aren't on (imus/rush) for background familiarity.
I've always worked every day; before telecommuting it meant that the work cafeteria was closed.
Now it means no UPS delivery, in case a parcel wound up on UPS.
I remember visiting a retired friend years ago. On his refrigerator, he had a huge Honey Do list. At the top of the list, it said, "You think work is hard, try retirement." At the bottom, it continued, "And no days off!"
You will find that you prefer the weekdays, when most of the populace is stuck behind a counter waiting for you to come boss them around, instead of driving their stupid cars around on your roads.
Enjoy the discovery!
Partial retirement hasn't really changed my conception of weekends that much. Partly, it may be because during much of the time that I was working full time, I flew back to CO every other weekend for my kid, and ended up working the other weekend, when I was most productive, with no one else in the office to bother me. Which meant that I would tend to work 11 1/2 days straight, then have a 2 1/2 day weekend. I do have clients, but since everything is remote, weekends don't matter. Still, my partner is tied to weekends, for some odd reason (she doesn't work at all). So, we went out to dinner last night because it was Fri. night. That sort of thing.
Good that you are so active. My theory is that the more you are active, the younger you are. Or, at least think that you are. And, even if you don't live that much longer, you will enjoy it more.
I don't imagine Ann would fly into Telluride either. The drive over the Dallas Divide is spectacular.
Good for you Ann! I am looking forward to joining your ranks this time next year!
You might find the ingrained work week/weekend mindset difficult to leave behind. After 20 years, I still think in terms of it.
One of the best parts of retirement is being able to take weekend trips mid-week when hotels are cheaper (except in large cities where the opposite is true) and crowds thinner (again, except in large cities where the opposite is true).
Does the university give you a gold watch or anything??
TFW you are driving, and pass near a school, and have to ask yourself "Is this a weekday?"
Being self employed in a service type business (plumbing, water systems), we do not know what weekends are. Nor do we know what Holidays or vacations are all about. A weekend is just like any other day.
The disadvantage of self employment where people rely on you for emergency services, like they are completely out of water, and if you have a sense of duty, is that you work when called. Weekend, holiday whatever.
The advantage of self employment is that you can chose to work when you feel like it. You can schedule your jobs that are not crucial or time sensitive to be bunched up and done at your convenience. The other great advantage as Sukie Tawdry said is that you can take your weekend in the middle of the week.
Half the time, we don't even know what day it is. Is today Friday or Saturday and what difference does it make anyway?
The best best BEST thing about retirement is being able to wake up when your body feels like it, instead of being jarred out of sleep by a rude alarm clock. I haven't had an alarm clock in 5 years. Just gradually wake up, stretch leisurely and get up when you are ready. I am usually up by 5AM....but that is MY choice. Those afternoon naps are pretty nice too :-)
I can't wait until you take up yoga.
I loathe being stuck in a room where someone is telling me what to do.
I signed up for a yoga class once. In the first session, the instructor told us to never point our palms or the soles of our feet at him because that's from where all our negative energy emanates. That was the end of yoga class for me. My sister, however, an RN, credits yoga with maintaining the strength and agility required in her work. VCRs and the Internet pretty much eliminated the need for classes.
When my husband retired, someone told him that after retirement every day is Saturday, except Sunday.
Weekends never lose their meaning. Even now I imagine the traffic of Friday evenings. Then, just try staying in on a sunny Saturday morning. And how relaxed you feel on Sunday. Then come the weekdays, which one-by-one build excitement toward another weekend.
Weekends never "retire," they just continue to take you right along with them.
Enjoy.
I trust the class will give you a well deserved standing ovation. Bravo
"I start losing track of what day is which"
Occasionally I take my 94-year-old father in law to his geriatric specialist. She, like pretty much every other doc he's seen in the last year (since his fall) asks a bunch of questions to evaluate his alertness and awareness. Among these is inevitably "What month is it?" "What day of the week is it?"
He rarely knows, but why should he? He's being taken care of, 24/7. This is California, where seasons don't enter into it, and he's living in lotus-eater land.
Ann, beware of lotus-eater land.
Did I miss Althouse announcing her retirement? Or is this the announcement?
Weekends are the days you don't take care of shopping, go out to State or National Parks, go to your favorite restaurant. You can now do stuff when and where the working hordes are occupied, which is nice.
On the other hand, as a man, all the really hard Honey Do stuff --replacing rotten fence posts, rebuilding gates and stone walls-- you put off because of work demands: you just lost your excuse. (Took about 9 months for my spouse to realize it, so true retirement was experienced.)
Congratulations!
In Nancy Mitford's novels, the real gentry invited people to their country homes "Friday to Monday," and "weekend" was a term used by the bourgeois. Mitford later wrote an essay on "U" and "Non-U" terms, where "U" stood for "Upper class." She did it somewhat jokingly, and later wrote to a friend that she herself couldn't always remember which terms she had declared to be "U."
Why did both you and Nina retire in December? Isn't there any advantage to completing a full academic year or do you get some benefits for a half year?
Future students will be much the poorer for your absence from the classroom.
For cheddar -- sometimes it relates to how sabbaticals are arranged. You cannot generally take a sabbatical and then just retire, so there's often one semester tacked onto the end of a sabbatical year. IDK if this is the case here or that's just the way her course-load was inclined to break.
Either way, future law students at UW won't even realize what they're missing.
Roughcoat said...
Did I miss Althouse announcing her retirement? Or is this the announcement?
See what you miss if you don't tune in every day. Yes, previously announced, a few times.
AA: You'll be surprised (or not) how easily you adjust to not working a "job." You have plenty of interests, you'll have more time for them or new ones.
A social constructionist would say this is your last faux weekend, and now the real ones start. You only have weekends if you keep track of days of the week. When you let that go will you truly have no weekends. But a word of warning, they ask what day it is as well as the month and the year at the hospital and nursing home and if you don't answer correctly they think you've lost cognitive ability.
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