Retirement Routine

Retirement is 'doing whatever you please,' I suppose, but really every life needs some routines. One of mine (when I'm in town and sometimes when I'm away as well) is to get up every morning and have coffee and work the NY Times crossword. If it is Monday-Wednesday, I copy it first and try to get FFP to play along. If it's Sunday, I copy it a couple of times just so I'll have worksheets and won't interfere with FFP reading the NY Times Magazine where it appears.

I find myself looking forward to getting up at 7ish and doing this coffee and puzzle ritual. I often work other puzzles in other papers. (We get the local rag, The Austin American-Statesman. and The Wall Street Journal.) If it's a weekday, I turn the TV on to CNBC to see how the financial markets are doing. If it's Sunday, I've recently taken to turning on a Sunday morning jazz station. I record CBS Sunday Morning and watch it later.

Another routine I have when in town is to go to my club and play casual tennis on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

A lot of days, after the coffee and the stab at the puzzles (I also do the nearby Ken-Ken puzzles in the Times), my day is shaped by things we've agreed to do: entertainment, meals, events. Sometimes with others, sometimes just us. Sometimes we take a walk and have a meal or snack and see what's happening within the three-mile or so radius that is our limit. But the routines, the things we usually do, give life some shape. Sixteen years after retiring from the life defined by work routines, it gives some comfort.