Tonight at dinner, my son-in-law asked me how I was liking retirement so far. Immediately, I replied, "Having the time of my life - I advise everyone to do it while they are young enough to enjoy it!" Many people, including me, thought I was going to struggle with retirement. I always thrived on being busy - it gave me energy. I'm still busy, just busy doing other things. Since retiring a little over 3 months ago, I have been traveling, playing golf, working out, gardening, sewing, cooking, planning baby showers, shopping, etc. But let me make it clear - every day is not a fun day.
Just the other day, I was commenting that I wanted to find something to do with all of the jalapeños growing in my garden. My friend suggested I make and preserve jalapeño pepper jelly. I thought it was a great idea. I have tried the jalapeño jelly from Arizona and loved it. It's sweet and tasty. After finding a recipe for jalapeño jelly on Pinterest, I chopped the jalapeños (wearing gloves of course) and followed all of the steps described in the recipe. To make a very long story short, here are the reasons I will never try that again:
- Jelly has WAY too much sugar in it!
- Sticky and messy
- Ugly (they must add a lot of food coloring to the jelly they make in AZ)
- No. One. Will. Ever. Eat. It.
- I am highly sensitive to the capsaicin in jalapeño peppers even wearing gloves! Yikes!
Sometimes you try an activity that you think you might like and either you don't care for it or it doesn't work out. Isn't it better to try something and fail than to not try it at all? Honestly, jelly making is the first thing since retiring that hasn't really worked out. At least I know that jelly making isn't really my thing. Jalapeños aside, I don't care to give that much energy to anything with THAT much sugar!
Some days, you have to still be a grown-up and do grown-up tasks - clean your car, clean your house, wait for the repairman, wash windows, etc. These would be the "not fun" days. It"s easy to get caught up in "play mode" especially when you know you have the next day to do your grown-up jobs. For this reason, I do try and use my planner to keep me on track and grounded. Although the luxury of having a flexible schedule is great, my Type A personality won't allow complete flexibility. I do love my planner!
It is obvious that I have taken the summer to immerse myself into activities that I have had an interest for but never had time to try. It's been a great summer but I need to have more "not fun" days to organize those photos and get all of the house projects finished that are on my "to do" list. I do have two grandbabies coming so finishing off my projects now is a priority. Retirement is awesome but remember to balance.
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