Take Off

I suppose I am not qualified to comment on anybody else's life.  But I suspect that many people have set routines.  Work is 9 - 5 Monday through Friday.  Weekends are yardwork, Friday night fish fry, watching sporting events of one sort or another. 

Repeat.

I can't remember ever living that way.  

At least for the last decade life has had more of an up and down, sawtooth pattern to it.  The sharp pointy parts could be a stretch of concentrated ER shifts or another round of (extended) family crisis.  The intervals between were brief respites, always with another serrated edge approaching fast.

After a while you get used to it.  It becomes a calculus of balancing naps, caffeine, griping conversations with one's Spouse (we have a policy of alternating gripes) and trying to keep in mind the many positives in our worlds.

The last couple of weeks feel like the first time I have actually been Retired.  Prior to that it was Pseudo Retirment.  I stood down from the ER but went straight into the maelstrom of coaching FIRST Robotics.  Then back to clinic work for the summer. Then a stint as a Tech School student.  Back to FIRST Robotics.  

It was all stress, but a good kind of stress on the whole.  Just four more challenging things to get done.  Three.  Two.  One. Robotics is over.  My schedule......wide open.

In a few days I am off to England for the annual archeology trip. After that a bit of add on travel fun.  Responsibilities?  Stress? People expecting me to do this or that difficult thing at a specific time?  Nah.  I will be spending some quality time with ancient citizens who could not have even imagined my existence, undemanding folks whose day to day concerns ended 1800 years ago.

And after that?  Oh, I suppose I will continue to go through the cafeteria line of life repeatedly.  Hmmm...that looks like something that will be fun but stressful and probably beyond my current or projected abilities.  "Gimme a big helping of that. Oh, another couple of scoops if you please".

But until then, off to green fields.