Searching for writing ideas

According to study results published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, an individual’s well-being increases in correlation with their free time — but only to a certain point. While having too little free time isn’t healthy, having too much also diminishes wellbeing. Angela Haupt, Washington Post.

I don’t know what to think until I see what I’ve said. E.M. Forster

There are some activities I do in retirement that I consider “just killing time until I die.“ Working online jigsaw puzzles, doom-scrolling news articles, watching reruns of old sitcoms, you know, ways to entertain oneself until starting something more productive.

Writing, however, is one activity I have always considered productive. I’ve cranked out a lot of articles, columns, and books over the years. I never seemed to have a problem finding something to write about while I was working. Like Forester quoted above, I found my own thinking clarified as a result of writing.

But now I often struggle to find a topic worthy of composition.

Two of my best friends are also retired and writers. They never seem to lack inspiration. One is a retired college professor who continues to produce articles on children’s books and children’s book illustrations. The other writes mystery novels and entertaining non-fiction books and articles on Minnesota history and science. Both genres require research and interviews with experts. I’d define this as formal or scholarly research, despite the final products being popular rather than purely academic .

I suspect my frustration with finding suitable topics on which to ponder through writing may be because I am too lazy to actually do formal research. My work with school libraries and educational technology gave me lots of problems, puzzles, and conflicts to study, solve, and resolve. Many, if not most, of the issues I faced were what Larry Cuban would have called dilemmas rather than problems, requiring management rather than solutions. (Getting teachers to use technology productively; raising awareness of ethical issues in technology; shaping the evolution of school libraries, etc.) “Action-based research” might be too formal a description of what I was doing (little data, no experiments, few interviews), but the topics on which I wrote were about what I dealt with everyday in my work as a technology director.

A mixed blessing of a financially comfortable retirement is that one has fewer problems for which solutions must be found. I don’t have a boss to please or staff to manage. Should I not enjoy my volunteer work, I can simply stop doing it. I have no required readings. 90% of the news involves issues over which I have little control. I’ve purposely stepped back from commenting on educational technology and school librarianship in the hope younger and brighter voices will be better heard. 

I feel good when writing about my travel adventures. I am engaged when writing about volunteering. My observations about the elderly I serve are difficult for me to write, but meaningful. I enjoy reflecting on life lessons learned. 

What a lack of writing topics tells me is that I need to get more serious about finding activities that are important enough to write about. 

After all, I may one day regret the hours spent just killing time. I may wish I had some of that time back...