Learning to Live Differently - #4

This is the continuing story of how I learn to live in retirement.

4.  Developing an incentive program.  For the last few decades I have gotten up a 6 am (or earlier), showered, dressed, and driven over an hour to work.  On the way to work I planned my day and set goals for myself.  Well, my body clock still wakes me up at 6 am.  That's okay, I like the morning when the house is quiet.  From 6 to 8 am I am on my own time.  But when 8 am comes guilt sets in.  I need goals.  In order to achieve those goals I need incentives.  So I find that I set up mini incentive programs.  For example, if I spend 4 hours cleaning the basement, I can spend an hour on the patio reading.  No one wants to clean the basement.  Frankly no one is going to care if I do it or not, except me.

When I was little my mom would watch Days of Our Lives at lunch time.  It was her one indulgence.  When I was home sick from work, I used to turn it on.  Soap opera plots move so slowly that you can watch a couple of times a year and still follow the story.  I used to envy the amount of time the characters seemed to have.  They would sit, all dressed up in nice clothes, reading magazines on the couch.  Their living rooms never looked messy.  They never seemed bogged down with the mundane tasks of laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning.  And they were guilt free.  Of course they were getting into all kinds of trouble...

Life is not like that.  I am not like that.  I need a plan.  I need to accomplish things.  Cleaning the basement is one of those things.  I will enjoy it when it is clean and organized.  I will sleep better.  Is that the training I got from my mother?  Is it genetics?  Is it years of working hard?  Probably all of those things.  Reading on the patio is better with a sense of accomplishment.