How busy is too busy?

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days.  Annie Dillard

A question I have been asking myself since I retired five years ago: Is it better to be too busy or not busy enough now that my days are my own? After 43 years of having much of my daily activity dictated by employers, finding a new balance of activity and leisure is somewhat tricky. I am asking myself this again after two weeks of what seems like non-stop activity.

Advice about pre-retirement planning tends to focus on finances. How much money do I need to retire in comfort and security? At what age would I receive maximum retirement benefits? What expenses can I reduce after I quit working? Should I downsize my home? 

I remember no questions like: How do you plan to fill your days when you no longer have to go into the office? What will give your life purpose and meaning? With whom are you going to socialize? How will you stay motivated? How will you prioritize your spending? How can you maintain your health? Will you have something to look forward to each day when you wake up? Will you have something to be proud of doing to think about as you go to bed each night. How do you find the right balance of activity and leisure, schedule and free time?

The graphic above is a screenshot of my Google calendar for the current week. It shows the volunteer rides I gave, Rotary meetings I attended, organized bike rides I participated in, my driving a senior living van for shoppers, training for a new volunteer role I am doing, trip planning calls I’ve made. It does not show my daily walks or regular workouts at the Y. 

Nor does it show the hours I cherish being able to read two newspapers each morning, play a few online games, and read interesting books. It does not reflect the time I get to spend with my friend Heidi and our meals together or our times watching movies or simply reading side by side. It does not reflect time spent grocery shopping, cooking, making the bed, or doing laundry. It doesn’t show time I’ve spent calling family members and friends. Nor does it reflect quiet times when I can put a few words down to later post on my blog, helping me remember the life I once lived and am living now. 

Early next week looks just as busy. Thank goodness there is a holiday toward the end of the week. We retirees need it.

The photographic explosion

Harbor on the island of Ven, Denmark

Taken on my most recent trip abroad, I uploaded 236 digital photos to storage. That averages out to about 20 pictures a day. And that is after weeding duplicates, poor shots, and “what the hell is that?” subjects. 

With the invention of digital photography, especially in cell phones, I find it difficult to determine whether I should take a photo of something or not. Who needs yet one more picture of the pyramids or the Statue of Liberty or a mountain valley? (My son takes a photo of every meal he eats, I think.) At what point do we have such a flood of personal photos available, they somehow dilute rather than enhance our memories? 

Back in the bad old days of my youth, one thought carefully about taking a picture with one’s Polaroid, Kodak, or Pentax since every shot cost money. You paid for the film, of course, but also the flash bulb (or cube), the processing, the printing and the album in which those shiny pieces of paper were organized and stored. Judging from my recent project of scanning old photo albums from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, I did not throw many photos away due to bad composition, lack of focus, or “what the hell is that?” subjects.

For whom do we take photos and why? I certainly love to bore people with my pictures and the presentations I make which incorporate them. Family photos comprise the calendar I create for my siblings, mother, and children. I throw a few pics in my blog posts from time to time. 

But perhaps more than anything, I take them for myself. To kindle warm fires of memory - of small children being held, of challenging adventures being accomplished, of a life being lived, both sweet and bittersweet. Somehow photographs prove one has actually been there, done that, got the shirt.

One photographer I admire is my friend Tim who lives in the Washington DC area. He fairly regularly posts his photos on his  blog, Assorted Stuff. He views photography as an art form and answered my query about why we take photos in this thoughtful email:

Your question about why we take so many photos is a good one, and lots of people I talk to can’t really answer it for themselves. "What do you do with all those images?" has been a major topic in the smartphone camera classes I’ve taught over the past five years. Most of my students (largely retirees) leave with some ideas to consider but no real solutions.

 For me, it’s a hobby, of course. But I still regularly reflect on why I enjoy it and where I want to take my photography next. I agree that the world probably doesn’t need another shot of an iconic site like the Statue. Which is why I try to find a perspective that is slightly different from what others might see.

I suspect that unless we are a recognized photographer like Ansel Adams or Annie Leibovitz our images will fade over generations. With some small curiosity I look at photos of my parents in their youth, my grandparents, and various relatives posed in dress clothes staring at the camera with serious looks on their faces, captured forever in black and white. Despite being insusceptible to deterioration like their print cousins, my digitals may well last long into the future. As long as there is power to the remote server on which they are held.

But perhaps we should paraphrase another question: If a photo exists, but there is no one to view it, does it matter?

Oh, a photo from my most recent restaurant meal…

So how was your Denmark bike trip?

“So how was your trip?” are the first words out of most people’s mouths when one returns from a vacation. The answer, I suppose, is one that I should be formulating as I actually travel, not when I get back and am forced to compress a couple weeks worth of activity, joys, and errors into a sentence of two. So I do like to blog a bit about my adventures, mostly help me remember where I’ve gone, what I’ve done. If the post amuses others, so much the better.

I spent the last week of May and the first week in June in Denmark and Sweden. My usual travel companion was “traveled out" having been on a weeks-long cruise earlier in May. So I was left unsupervised. The bulk of my time was spent on a BoatBike tour - sailing on the Atlantis to ports up and down the Oresund Strait between the two countries. Bike rides were modest distances each day, the weather cooperated, the fellow cruisers (nearly all from the US) were enjoyable, and the countryside was beautiful. We visited castles, cathedrals, and museums, stopping for coffee at least once each guided ride. This was a new tour for the BoatBike company, so the guides did not seem to have as much background knowledge of the areas we visited to share as on other trips I’ve taken with them. One planned stop had to be canceled due to rough weather prohibiting the use of an inflatable dinghy taking us to shore. 

I added a few days at the end of the eight day cruise to spend in Copenhagen where I took a city bike tour, a hop-on, hop off bus tour, an hour-long canal boat tour, and a day-long small group tour to Rosekilde to visit the Viking Museum among other sites. 

While I found the city a bit confusing at first to navigate (no phone internet - see below*), I did come to appreciate its beauty - a complex blend of historic buildings and modern architecture. The place rivals Amsterdam as a cyclists’ paradise with bike lanes and bike paths on nearly every street. And thousands of aggressive riders on them. 

Denmark and Sweden have some amazing museums, palaces, castles, and art displays. Among the ones I enjoyed were:

• Lund Cathedral with its astrological (not astronomical) clock
• Namndemansgarden Farm Museum and Tycho Brache museum on the small island of Ven
• Kronberg Castle - inspiration for Shakespears’s Hamlet
• Frederksborg Castle built by one of mad kings of Denmark
• The Round Tower with its Library Hall and spiral path to the observatory on top
• Thorvaldsens Museum of sculptures, many based on Greek and Roman mythology
• Rosekilde Cathedral where 40 kings and queens are buried/entombed
• National Museum in Copenhagen - great historical introduction to Denmark
• Rosenborg Castle with its display of the Crown Jewels and beautiful gardens
• Viking Museum with its salvaged ships

Whew. I’m getting exhausted just listing all these places. And I may have left a couple out.

It was high school graduation day when we were in the city of Lund, Sweden. Hundreds of beautiful young men in dark suits and young women in white dresses were walking throughout the city. 

A history lesson was given at nearly every site. Each guide expressed pride in their country, in their current monarchy (especially the new Australian born queen), and the economic vitality of this small country. Copenhagen was safe, clean, and friendly (and expensive). I am glad I went.

A link to all my photos can be found here.

*A week or so prior to this trip, I upgraded my phone at my local TMobile store in order to have a device that would use an eSIM so I would no longer have to swap out the physical SIM when I travel overseas. What I did not remember to do (duh) was to make sure the phone was unlocked prior to leaving. A phone locked by its US service provider will not accept a SIM from any other source. One of those situation when it make me question whether I should be allowed to travel without supervision… And yes, I got my phone unlocked when I got home.