When you work as an independent contractor, you never really retire. I called it retiring when I left the Virginia Society for Technology in Education as the directorship had been my main gig for many years. But, I continued to consult and teach. For the past year, I have taught online for a Virginia university’s library science program. I am finishing up the summer semester this week. I am not scheduled to teach another course until the second half of the fall semester. So, once I submit my grades this coming weekend, I will not be working for money, my version of retiring.

To be honest, the teaching I have been doing takes up just a few hours a week so it won’t be huge change: there are no live classes, only office hours. I joke that my main jobs are to nag and grade. I also work hard to create community and develop meaningful relationships with my students in an online, asynchronous class. But despite not being a huge demand on my time, the work provided some structure to the week. Next Monday, it really won’t matter that it is Monday. There will be no announcements to post or assignments to grade.

I am spending my first week of “retirement” visiting my family in Pennsylvania. And then, when I return the following Monday, the week unfolds with wide open spaces on the calendar. Rereading my post from 2022, I have kept to the list of what was going to do when I retired: reading, gardening, and lots and lots of making of all sorts of arts and crafts with a focus on making different kinds of books. I practice the piano most days and occasionally pluck at the ukulele. My morning routine includes journaling and some sort of artwork, often a quick collage or doodle. We adopted a dog last year, and we take a long walk each morning, watching the property change with the seasons. I am doing some volunteer work including serving on the Board of Trustees of the regional library system, participating in a bell choir, and playing piano and singing hymns with a group at the local rehab center once a month. I have avoided the very active pickleball group but do attend the book group at the library.

This fall, I want to spend time doing all of the above along with quilting and watercoloring, two of my newer interests. As for writing, I will keep poking at this blog. It might be fun to do some throwback Thursday posts to see what I was writing about in 2003 and 2013 and all the years in between. I would also like to try my hand at poetry. Earlier this year, I wrote a daily haiku and found it to be a mindful way to start each day. To that end, I pulled a few poetry writing manuals off the shelf.