Thoughts on wasting time

MACKTEXAS said:
I intellectually understand what your saying, and even agree with it, but after a lifetime of working and having to make every minute count, I haven't been able to make the emotional change necessary to apply it to my life. I wish I could.
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How long have you been retired, Mack?

I'm pretty sure I get what you're saying. I think what you have to do is redefine "accomplishment." It took me a few years to do that. To use an extreme example, I couldn't call serving up a bowl of veg soup with perfectly done potatoes an accomplishment when compared to recovering the body of someone's missing loved one, like back in my underwater salvage and recovery days.

That sounds ridiculous, but that's why it was so hard for me to mentally create a new column under the word Accomplishments. I was proud of that soup and its "perfectly cooked potatoes." Of course it helped that I got a lot of compliments from my dinner guests, but, safe to say, that was praise I'd never heard before in my entire life. And it was specifically that that got me to rethink what an accomplishment is.

And just like back when I was working, accomplishments like that don't happen every day. Minor achievements, comparatively speaking, but I finally realized the value-level was just perception....my perception, specifically....so comparisons are moot.
 
Trish said:
With your moving plans and your social life, you will soon be busy and wondering how you ever got time to work. :)
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Our move I am certainly not looking forward to, but once it's done, hopefully my other half and I will get back to some semblence of what was. Our social life was, once upon a time, planned with military precision, it had to be. My paramedic wife's shift pattern from early starts, late starts, nights, weekends and public holidays, (she had just one Christmas day off in 30 years,) meant that we would see what dances were on and where, could we get there and back in a given time. It was certainly hectic. Nowadays my lady finds the stairs a challenge, hence the move.
As my wife says, we had hoped to grow old disgracefully, still doing all that we used to, albeit a tad slower, but her heart problem brought on old age almost overnight. However Trish, we share your optimism.
 
bobcat said:
...Is wasting it a wise choice, or should we even care? Perhaps the most meaningful and enjoyable times in life will be the ones we spent doing nothing but enjoying the moment without feeling guilty. Time is a strange thing...It may be time wasted by worldly standards, but going for a walk or drive with no destination, or just enjoying music or a good book, or sitting on the front porch with a cup of coffee and watching the world go by, may be one of the simple pleasures we have worked so hard to enjoy. Perhaps that's what should be on our to-do list. Maybe time is only wasted when there is no reward.
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All my adult life while working, have always wasted time during times I haven't felt well. Like after an active weekend, when returning home from the Monday at work, still feeling drained. And of course there were those days when something was physically bothering me like a tooth ache or recovering from a sinus infection and just tried passing the time as unpleasantly as I could whether watching TV, easting food, or, absorbing myself without purpose on my desktop, or napping.

During our free hours, much depends on what we do especially regarding projects, hobbies, and consuming food. One needs to find a balance in life between productive activities and those, by including periods for relaxation, amusement and fun. Skiing season is now over that is an example of enormous fun without being productive except as enjoyment. So in that sense fun can be productive mentally for our balanced well being. So is my frequent days at live music events. As we move into June, I will begin summer backpacking season in the Sierra Nevada. All this needs balance while being aware as seniors, our time of being alive, existing, is draining away, and could disappear completely with unforeseen bad health news. Time is precious, don't waste it.

During my working years, I had several long periods between jobs where I was free to do whatever and thus learned how to spend time much as grade school kids do during summer vacation. As someone that has read large amounts of science and technology, even on days when I had a purpose of accomplishing mentally absorbing such, have always taken breaks every few hours between sessions, lest strain becomes unpleasant.
As several decades landscape and nature photographer and hi tech person, I've always had considerable at home work to do, especially in Photoshop processing images and since retiring in 2014 about the same time I changed from using view camera 4x5 film to APS-c digital, have had much work also focus stack blending and multi column row frame stitch blending images. Some weeks have spent maybe 12 hours a day processing images that becomes a real strain unless I took breaks. Over this last month of March I did 3 road trips and it is only today that I have finished post processing.

I now need to manually html code all that and 3 earlier 2026 photography days into my website, that is easy to procrastinate over even starting since that will take many days over this next month to work through. Much more.
 
horseless carriage said:
Our move I am certainly not looking forward to, but once it's done, hopefully my other half and I will get back to some semblence of what was. Our social life was, once upon a time, planned with military precision, it had to be. My paramedic wife's shift pattern from early starts, late starts, nights, weekends and public holidays, (she had just one Christmas day off in 30 years,) meant that we would see what dances were on and where, could we get there and back in a given time. It was certainly hectic. Nowadays my lady finds the stairs a challenge, hence the move.
As my wife says, we had hoped to grow old disgracefully, still doing all that we used to, albeit a tad slower, but her heart problem brought on old age almost overnight. However Trish, we share your optimism.
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Moving is stressful but it will be worth it for you both. Once you are in your new home with no stairs, you can settle in and know that you won't have to go through it all again.

Just curious but, did you consider a stairlift or even a home lift? Stairlifts are a bit slow but, a friend of mine has a lift, she loves it!

Don't give up the idea of growing old disgracefully! Recovery takes time and an easier environment could work wonders. I hope you two will be dancing again one day 💃🕺
 
bobcat said:
Perhaps the most meaningful and enjoyable times in life will be the ones we spent doing nothing but enjoying the moment without feeling guilty. Time is a strange thing.

It may be time wasted by worldly standards, but going for a walk or drive with no destination, or just enjoying music or a good book, or sitting on the front porch with a cup of coffee and watching the world go by, may be one of the simple pleasures we have worked so hard to enjoy. Perhaps that's what should be on our to-do list.

Maybe time is only wasted when there is no reward.
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My wife and I had this discussion several times in the last days. We agree 💯 per cent.
 
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