Where is the time going?
Oct. 21st, 2024 02:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
It's 21-Oct, one month and one day since I got home from my trip, and almost a month since I got laid off.
We knew that the layoff was coming - as I said before, we don't know why the company kept me around as long as it did; they had no work for me, just a few little things that no one else wanted to do - so we were pretty prepared. We'd been discussing this for a while and we had decided that I would at least take some time off, to enjoy life a bit, while we saw what happened with the company and my husband's job, and if that looked like it was going to last, my "time off" would just quietly morph into full retirement. We hadn't intended to retire this early, but we'd been calculating for both of us retiring at the same time. With one of us working, the income is enough that the other could not work.
(Of course, it's really unlikely that the company will survive past the beginning of the year, at which point, we'll both have to start looking for jobs, but we'll fall off that bridge when we come to it.)
The past few months (not counting the trip) has been me, working remotely as I have for the last four years, and pretty much tied to my desk. While I had very little work, in the form of three to four meetings a week that I had to attend and nothing else, I still couldn't go off and do other things for the other thirty-six hours, because I had to be here in case someone needed me. (They never did.) So, I was stuck at my desk, doing things that could be done at my desk, and could be dropped immediately.
Thus, I couldn't really do anything crafty that would require time to put away paints and other supplies, or play computer games that required saves or getting a character to a safe area. I couldn't go off and clean the house, or do laundry. About all I could do was write, though I didn't get much of that done. I did volunteer to do a couple of long tasks for the project my husband is on, thus racking up some "work" cred, and I spent a good amount of time organizing things on the company wiki.
When I got laid off, it was actually a relief! Now I can go do the things I wanted to do! And you know what? I'm STILL not doing it!
I'm absolutely amazed at how much "retirement" time is eaten up by work! Everyone says that retirement is busy, that you'll find you have too many hobbies to do and too many places to go. I'm not even talking about that. It's been a month, and I have not yet spent a single hour doing hobbies or playing computer games during the weekdays.
Granted, a bunch of the time has been spent cleaning up after the trip, which is something that will eventually be done. I had to pursue a number of refunds on things that went wrong. (The worst was attempting to request a refund on an upgrade from British Airways, when their flight got canceled and I was put on a different flight without the upgraded seat. That took two different refund enquiries and multiple followups just to get them to go to the right department.) I wrote reviews for all of the activities I went on. I'm still not done cleaning up the stuff I traveled with, not even considering dealing with the souvenirs. And I'm still working on transferring my travel journal in Google Docs to the paper journal (TARDIS-shaped, of course). I haven't even gotten to posting about my trip here.
But most of my time is taken up by other stuff. Cleaning things up, organizing things, laundry, scheduling things and making appointments... the list goes on. Part of it is implementing a new organization system for my stuff (my things, my tasks, etc.), and yes, I can see that it'll save a lot of time later, but right now, I'm wondering how in the world I managed to do all the things I need to do in a day while also spending eight hours a day working.
I've gotten a little bit of writing done, but that's mostly been in fifteen minute snatches just before going to bed. My husband keeps saying that I just need to relax during the day and I'm like, "When do I have the time?" Well, we'll see how it is in another month. In the meantime, yes, I will eventually write up my trip, but who knows when.
We knew that the layoff was coming - as I said before, we don't know why the company kept me around as long as it did; they had no work for me, just a few little things that no one else wanted to do - so we were pretty prepared. We'd been discussing this for a while and we had decided that I would at least take some time off, to enjoy life a bit, while we saw what happened with the company and my husband's job, and if that looked like it was going to last, my "time off" would just quietly morph into full retirement. We hadn't intended to retire this early, but we'd been calculating for both of us retiring at the same time. With one of us working, the income is enough that the other could not work.
(Of course, it's really unlikely that the company will survive past the beginning of the year, at which point, we'll both have to start looking for jobs, but we'll fall off that bridge when we come to it.)
The past few months (not counting the trip) has been me, working remotely as I have for the last four years, and pretty much tied to my desk. While I had very little work, in the form of three to four meetings a week that I had to attend and nothing else, I still couldn't go off and do other things for the other thirty-six hours, because I had to be here in case someone needed me. (They never did.) So, I was stuck at my desk, doing things that could be done at my desk, and could be dropped immediately.
Thus, I couldn't really do anything crafty that would require time to put away paints and other supplies, or play computer games that required saves or getting a character to a safe area. I couldn't go off and clean the house, or do laundry. About all I could do was write, though I didn't get much of that done. I did volunteer to do a couple of long tasks for the project my husband is on, thus racking up some "work" cred, and I spent a good amount of time organizing things on the company wiki.
When I got laid off, it was actually a relief! Now I can go do the things I wanted to do! And you know what? I'm STILL not doing it!
I'm absolutely amazed at how much "retirement" time is eaten up by work! Everyone says that retirement is busy, that you'll find you have too many hobbies to do and too many places to go. I'm not even talking about that. It's been a month, and I have not yet spent a single hour doing hobbies or playing computer games during the weekdays.
Granted, a bunch of the time has been spent cleaning up after the trip, which is something that will eventually be done. I had to pursue a number of refunds on things that went wrong. (The worst was attempting to request a refund on an upgrade from British Airways, when their flight got canceled and I was put on a different flight without the upgraded seat. That took two different refund enquiries and multiple followups just to get them to go to the right department.) I wrote reviews for all of the activities I went on. I'm still not done cleaning up the stuff I traveled with, not even considering dealing with the souvenirs. And I'm still working on transferring my travel journal in Google Docs to the paper journal (TARDIS-shaped, of course). I haven't even gotten to posting about my trip here.
But most of my time is taken up by other stuff. Cleaning things up, organizing things, laundry, scheduling things and making appointments... the list goes on. Part of it is implementing a new organization system for my stuff (my things, my tasks, etc.), and yes, I can see that it'll save a lot of time later, but right now, I'm wondering how in the world I managed to do all the things I need to do in a day while also spending eight hours a day working.
I've gotten a little bit of writing done, but that's mostly been in fifteen minute snatches just before going to bed. My husband keeps saying that I just need to relax during the day and I'm like, "When do I have the time?" Well, we'll see how it is in another month. In the meantime, yes, I will eventually write up my trip, but who knows when.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-23 08:21 am (UTC)