Thoughts on "Retirement"

Ah, what a year I've had, so far!

I'm a CPA in Texas, and for the past 13 years, I worked at an AWESOME nonprofit organization that serves children.  I retired December 31, 2018.

However, the person hired to take my place resigned early this year, and my boss asked me to come back and help them until the annual audit was completed.

So I was retired six weeks, then I worked six weeks.  After that, I traveled about five weeks.  John and I went camping in our small trailer at Alabama's gorgeous Gulf Shores State Park.  After that, we went to California for a wedding, a bridal shower, and a family visit.  After that, we flew to Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina for the incredible knitting seminar that the Carolinas guild puts on.

Once I got back to Texas, there was a lot to do at the nonprofit, and again, I dug in and worked on some interesting projects.  There were deadlines, and one day last week I left at the end of the day thinking I couldn't focus my eyes on one more number.

Now I'm caught up there, and we might have a new CPA for the job starting soon. 

Meanwhile, John hasn't quite retired, either.  He has moved to part-time work while his employer gets someone transitioned into his project. 

I guess he's part-time, and I'm intermittent.  What a pair. 

This whole retirement things comes with a bunch of weird thoughts.  To share a few:

• I finally got the hang of working, and now I'm retiring.
• Are we going to suddenly get old, sick and die?
• Are we going to be broke and eat beans and rice? 
• Will I get fat again if I hang around the house?

Nah.  This is great.  We prepared carefully for retirement, and I'm not retiring to nothing, I'm retiring to something!  My machine knitting passion has led me to a lot of friendships, teaching opportunities, and I still love it.  I am teaching two more seminars later this year, one in Minnesota and one in California. 

The video part of the MK endeavor is going to be busy this year.  Right now, on each side of my monitor are post-its with lists of videos that need edited.  In addition to the shawl ones, the YouTube channel, dianaknits, gets one a month.  (This month was a cute, easy little cable, Little Twist Cables.  Did you see it?  Shameless plug:  if you subscribe, you'll get an email each time there's a new video.) 

One cool thing about my machine knitting buddies is some retired knitters are setting a great example for me about how to make the most of this time of life. 

Besides, ambition and get-up-and-go have moved firmly into my head space and they're always crouching there, ready to spring.  Now they move me in new directions.  For instance, in that first six weeks of "retirement," I reorganized and cleaned my whole nightmare of a messy knitting studio.  I had been throwing bags of stuff in there, then closing the door.  I also decided to create a circular sock machine book and video set, and got it finished. 

Then I decided to write a shawl book, and knitted a small mountain of shawls, many of which will make the cut. I'm going back to the shawl project now.