What shall I do today?

I retired a little more than 11 years ago.  (Yes, I know that makes me old.  Tell me about it.)  Shortly after that momentous day, my (also retired) next-door neighbour told me, "I give it three months.  Then you will wake up in the morning and ask yourself, 'What can I do today?  How can I fill all those hours until bedtime?'"  That was, as I said, 11 years ago and I still have never asked myself those questions.  You will have noticed, I hope, that the title of this little piece is "What shall I do today?", not "What can I do today?".

I have always felt sorry for those people who have been so involved in their working lives that they have no time for hobbies or other interests outside the job.  They are the people who, when they retire, find time dragging.  I am convinced that this is a major cause of them turning up their toes within a year or two of their retirement.

Maybe I was less dedicated to my job than some of those people but the fact remains:  I still have plenty with which to occupy myself.  Sometimes, indeed, there is just too much.  Luckily, that is not really the case today.  I finished off and sent out the June edition of the Brighton Lions' newsletter last week; I have printed out 100 menu cards for our Charter night dinner and dance this coming Saturday.  And that is a bigger job than it might sound.  Each menu card is personalised with the name of the attendee on the front and his/her choice of menu on the inside.  That's the easy bit as I use the mail merge facility in WordPerfect.  But then each card has to be fed into the printer by hand - twice, inside and outside - as the card doesn't feed properly otherwise.

So, what shall I do today?  Well, the grass could do with being mown and the wind has deposited a fair amount of rubbish in the front garden while the dustmen have been on strike.  Or I could make a start on the redesign of the back garden that I talked about quite a few days ago.  And then it has been suggested that I could update the video I made some years ago for the Lions' web site.  This was done using Photoshop Elements and even if I say so as shouldn't, it wasn't bad for only my second effort.



Or maybe I could make up a new one using photos of the South Downs and various sound effects?  Oh dear.  That's the trouble with today's world - decisions, decisions, decisions.