Fresh beginnings

The 7th July has come and gone and I'm now officially retired. As one might have expected the weather has also changed from warm and dry to cool with a lot of rain. The gardening plan is rather on hold! None the less it is good not to have had the alarm clock on for the last few days and to feel able to do as I please. What I have 'pleased' to do is to start a bullet journal as a way of tracking plans for the month including all of those tasks which have been neglected due to work. So the clearing out of cupboards and bookcases is under way, the washing is up to date and the ironing close to being so. The windows have all been cleaned and the house is in a good state of tidiness. Not that retirement should be all housework -- that would be just changing one sort of work for another unpaid version. I plan to spend at least a part of each day on craft activities. And yesterday was wool winding. A strangely satisfying task with a pleasant whir of swift and wool winder. Especially pleasing as it was happening on a Monday!

The last fling before the next thing....

So the 5th July.  I'm in an Aberdeen hotel the night before my last piece of paid work before I retire.  All the preparation is done, and the invoice three-quarters completed ready for the final additions on Friday.  The sending off the invoice and updating of this year's accounts will be the last proper work that I do, from lunchtime on the 7th I plan to be well and truly retired!

I've collected the final printed labels from the graphic designers/print shop and spent a pleasant evening a week ago packaging up and labelling all the socks I have already made.  I do hope that the 'Made in Stirling' shop will want to stock my products but if not I shall find a craft fair at which to sell them.

But socks will be mostly an evening occupation.  Through the summer I hope to get the garden sorted out -- pretty much rebuilt really, and also to go through the house thinning out 'stuff' and reorganising as I go.  I have no doubt that the paper bin will end up very filled and I shall also have a lot of shredding to do.  Some redecoration may be necessary thanks to the ministrations of Wee Hamish and Archie, and once the winter comes I shall be happy to get back to some quilting.

Before then of course, there are a few jollies to enjoy - a short trip to Wales to help with house-packing, a week-long trip to the Faroe Islands for a knitting and stitching holiday and a couple of visits to London to be wined and dined by friends.

And the days creep by....

So I am now down to only 21 working days before the big day, although in my head, having had THAT birthday I am thinking that I should be retired already.  It's odd, how the approaching cut-off time has me seriously procrastinating about doing pretty much anything that's not driven by a work related dead-line.  I find myself saying 'I'll do it when I retire' about everything from the garden to the ironing, from car servicing to the filing.  I've been making mental lists of all the things I need to sort out when I stop work and that is a very long list indeed.  I am still awaiting the final artwork from the designers for the new activity - actually selling the socks that I make (purely as an exercise in recouping the investment I have made in yarn over the years), something I am hoping will be done before the 7th July.  I am mentally compartmentalising the before (mostly work-related tasks, like prep, delivery, travel and finance admin) with after (house, craft, holidays, garden, friends) tasks and projects even though for the last 42 years these have been (mostly) comfortably intertwined.  I wonder whether I have been foolish in agreeing to do some small pieces of work for one of my clients over the next year and whether I should have made a clean break.  Time will tell.

In the meantime there are a couple of nice things to look forward to - a visit to Stobo Castle spa, a long weekend in Lisbon and a couple of good films.  And books, lots of books!  Some of the good stuff started on my birthday with a delightful visit to the Edinburgh Botanical Garden.  May is such a great month to have been born - I love rhododendrons and azaleas and the true blue Himalayan poppy.

The 19th May and only 29 working days until I retire, not that I'm counting or anything!  The 7th July is my last official working day after 42 years! Admittedly I've allowed myself to be persuaded to do a tiny bit of work for the University of Stirling next year -it is only ten minutes up the road and it is a repeat of things I've already done. The weird thing is that when I tell them that I'm retiring people ask "To do what?". My plan is to live in my house, something I've done surprisingly little of over the last five years, catch up on housework, decorating, gardening and importantly get back into some creative endeavours like knitting socks! I'm also looking forward to spending a bit more time with the cats....

Summertime...

So after a frantic few months of being very busy and not so busy, the summer approaches, and of course the weather has turned grey and wet. Two more weeks of manic work-related activity up and down the country before a quieter July and a chance to get back to some sewing. I'm pleased to say that I 've turned down a couple of pieces of work from the Leadership Foundation in order to free-up some space for work elsewhere. I now have work scheduled with the University of Stirling and the University of Exeter so the Autumn will have some interesting days.

For now I'd love to get out in my garden. Everything is growing like mad, including the weeds, and the week of rain that followed three weeks of sunshine has made a difference. Peas are about three feet high (no flowers yet) and the runners are a third of the way up their poles and starting to produce flower stems. I've harvested my first handful of radishes! The carrot, beetroot, spinach, chard and kale seeds are all growing well. A bit of thinning needed here however so that I end up with more than leaves. And the wonderful rambler, 'Seagull' is just coming into bloom. This year, so far, the clematis haven't got the wilt, and the shrubs in the pots are doing well, although I do want to find space to plant them in the beds.

Inside the first quilt in many years has been completed, see photos of'glacier moon' whilst in progress, second now is on the frame (the black and white mystery quilt) albeit that slightly less time has been spent on that of late due to a recent burst of travelling. In the meantime socks are still actively being produced in the evenings and a few commissions have been picked up for friends and my goddaughter.

Time flies when......

.... Work life balance is more work than life!  I've just rediscovered this blog page that I started in 2009 and see that even then I was complaining about how hectic my life was. Strange that seven years on this unremitting work related activity has finally led me to give up full time employment and become a free-lance leadership developmnent consultant.  And a fortnight into my new life I have work beginning to fill up the blank pages of the diary and most importantly I feel that I have my life back.

How wonderful it is to give myself permission to take a day off to go to the Quilt show at Edinburgh, and to spend the whole weekend quilting! Maybe there is some hope that the five quilt tops that are pieced but unquilted will finally be completed and that I can start making some of the kits I've been buying for years.  Shorter evenings are now spent knitting socks with wool from my stash and catching up on blog posts from knitters I haven't seen in ages. Long may it last.

My friends tell me I look relaxed and I know I am sleeping better (and longer now that I am no longer regularly getting up at 04:30 to drive to the airport).

Of course I do still have to earn a living, so I can't be taking days off every week -- I'll have to go out and find work as well as design and deliver it. But for a few weeks perhaps, I'll work part-time, and see whether I can't slow down time enough to enjoy it.

The Year Moves On

So where exactly did january and February go? The time seems to be flying by; perhaps it's my age, or maybe the years are getting shorter; either way, here we are in March. Notwithstanding the threatened snow, my bit of Scotland has remained remarkably snow-free although it is cold but bright with blue, blue skies. In the garden the bulbs are beginning to show (along with the new crop of weeds) and the trees are budding up nicely.

On the work front, I'm struggling to keep up with a sudden deluge of email and the need to organise a range of events. Constant trips to London, Edinburgh and Glasgow interupt the flow and make spending any concentrated effort on one project almost impossible. But this is course is part of the job! Still I do hanker for a couple of 'office days' when I can catch up and maybe get ahead.

At home I'm thinking about the DIY that needs doing (and wondering who to get in to do it!) and have at least arranged for the electrician to come in, even though I've given no further thought to the plumbing that needs looking at.

My efforts as a producer of socks continues, with orders stacking up all the time. How do people find out that I knit (and only knit socks?). Still, am happy to oblige but would like a little respite so I can learn some new techniques. I've joined the new Borders' knitting group that meets on a Sunday morning, and that looks like it might be an interesting experience. I'd also like to get on with some quilting and some gardening, but the latter at least will have to wait until the weather warms up a little. For now, it's time to get back to work.