News that's endless

A few weeks into the new year -- a few weeks after the time I declared my retirement had actually begun -- I started a new file on my computer entitled "Books I Have Read in Retirement." My idea in making the list was that I would not only keep a list of the books but I would also make brief notes about the most important things I had learned from the books. I started it off with a book I had bought for my husband but which I had skimmed, so it didn't take long and there, I had one book on the list! Then, the list sat there unchanged until yesterday. It took me two months to read another book?? And I'm retired, with "reading" being a prime component of my intended daily schedule?

I AM reading. I'm just not doing very well on the books. I find I'm more inclined to take a moment for the quick stuff -- magazines and newspapers -- but often, "quick" turns into "prolonged." That's because I read most of them online, and news online is literally endless. In addition to the local paper, which sends me a daily digest by e-mail, I can read updated news, plus features, from the Washington Post and New York Times, and I have Slate and Politico and SkyGrid apps on my phone. Every time I check e-mail on my computer, the AOL homepage offers dozens of links. If I follow one of them, the page I end up on offers its own links, which leads to more links, and so on. I can read Time magazine on my phone and online I can read an unlimited number of magazine articles. Meanwhile, I've probably thought of something I need to Google or to research on Amazon.com or TripAdvisor, and I'm off to more links.There is always the lure of "just one more link, it'll only take a minute." At the end of a day I can have read thousands of words and never picked up a book.

But the realization it had taken me two months to complete a book startled me. I also came upon a file on my computer I had started in February called "Books I Want to Read in Retirement." I still want to read those books, and I still have a stack of books waiting that I optimistically bought last fall.

Keeping up with the news is important, and the short articles I read are informational and often fun. But  time must be budgeted even in retirement, it seems, so I am going to allocate my reading time and make sure some gets saved for books. I've already picked out the next one from my stack, and there are some fascinating ones beckoning. And I've got those two books on retirement that I've started on but got sidetracked from. I promised to pass along tips and ideas from them, and I will. I promise. Now that the "just one more link" lure has been identified, it can be conquered!

The value of disconnecting

Disconnecting is part of retirement. Last fall, I was a bit worried about whether I would be able to do that. After all, I had worried over the problems of the department for more than 20 years, and it had been my job to fix as many of them as possible. How was I going to manage to no longer care what happened?

My solution to that has been to remain fairly well uninformed. If I can't do anything about a problem anyway, it's better to not even know about it. I first learned this when my kids were at college. I was not of the helicopter generation of parents, and this was before cellphones and texting. My younger daughter went to college hundreds of miles away in another state and I generally found out about problems and crises after the fact. At 1 a.m. on a Friday night, I did not lie awake worrying about where she was. For all I knew, she was fast asleep in her dorm room. Worrying made no sense when I knew nothing at all. On the other hand, my older daughter lived at home while attending a professional school. When she still hadn't gotten home at 2 a.m. on a Friday night, I knew about it and I worried.

So when I planned my retirement, I determined that I would deliberately remain uninformed about goings-on in the department. For the most part, I have successfully done that. But I still have friends there so last week I went back to campus and visited with some of them. It was a great time, such fun to visit with them and catch up with what is going on with them personally. The students wanted to know my opinions about their work, and of course that is always a great ego-booster! And it was such fun seeing how well they were doing. One of the students, the one who had stood outside my office wailing about what she was going to do when that office was empty, had not only performed admirably in her job but had also applied to two hard-to-get-into grad schools and been accepted into both. For all of my friends, there may have been problems in the department that they were dealing with, but I think they sensed that I didn't want to go there.

So I came away with good warm feelings -- and no worries whatsoever.

Reminisce first, delete later

When I was working, I sometimes got behind on my computer maintenance. Even updates labeled "critical" sometimes got postponed a week, and if it wasn't labeled critical it probably got postponed indefinitely.

So it is nice that retirement allows me the time to keep my computer safer. I will admit, however, that when Google started posting notices about its new privacy policy and added in bold letters, "This is important," I always pushed on past to the page I wanted. Then on Feb. 29, truly last-minute, Twitter and Facebook and e-mail lit up with messages letting people know they should pay attention NOW!

The instructions said that after changing Google account settings to prevent further gathering of my computer usage, I should also delete the "history" files in each browser. I changed the Google setting promptly but I haven't deleted my Firefox history yet because it's been too interesting to prowl through. Have you scrolled through yours lately? If I don't have time for a diary posting on a given day, I should just copy and paste the history from Firefox because it will tell what I was interested in on that day.

My files for February show that I was researching maps and weather and points of interest in south Louisiana and east Texas for a three-day trip we just returned from. I knew I had looked at a lot of options, but the history file told me I had actually viewed hundreds of pages, about restaurants and points of interest I chose, and just as important, ones I didn't choose. I learned where to look to find bluebonnets blooming in Texas now (best spots are on the roadsides between Navasota and Conroe); I learned the history of the Galveston seawall; and I learned which coastal highways had been reopened and which had not, since Hurricane Ike struck in 2008. I also learned about the fires last year that devastated the Lost Pines in Bastrop State Park; and that you have to buy your tickets to the Blue Bell Creamery tours by the day before. Interspersed with the travel sites were recipe sites with "cilantro" in their name, because I had just bought a cilantro plant and wanted to know how to cook with it. I had followed some of our alums through their Facebook pages, looking at photos of their weddings and birthday parties and kids. And every day there were news stories, making it easy to connect all of this with what was going on in the world at the same time.

If you're retired and have time, take a walk down your memory lane and look up the things that were on your mind a month ago, or six or nine months ago. Back in September I was looking up how to adopt a baby African elephant as a birthday gift for our granddaughter, with a Harry Potter LEGO set as a real and present gift. At the same time I was viewing news items about Supreme Court cases and the Republican presidential race.

Since I don't want to cancel my Google account -- I'd have to cancel this blog, among other things -- I suppose I will have to clear my history at some point. But I'm going to finish the reminiscing before I do.

"Take time to stop and smell the roses"

We don't have roses at this time of year but the azaleas are popping out in all their once-a-year beauty and I have spent time photographing them. That's my excuse for not having a real blog post today. There's only a picture (worth a thousand words, right?). Thanks to this butterfly for stopping by at just the right time.