Now that I’ve settled in to life back in Bali, done the visa run, gotten through the most recent holiday season and seen in a new year, it’s time to get back to my list of things to do during retirement and start to do them.
Sunday was to be my first day of exercise. Su has been working on getting me to join the Tai Chi group on Sunday mornings, but as usual, I had a hard time waking up at 5:30 to get over to the harbor where the exercises take place. But, eventually she was able to get me out of bed, and Su, Rebecca and I took a 4 kilometer walk around the city which is one of the things that people do in some parts of Indonesia, take these early morning walks for exercise. If you arrive in Lombok early on a Sunday morning on the ferry from Bali, you’ll pass groups of people all out for their Sunday walk.
empty streets on a Sunday morning
As I’ve written before, it’s easy to fall into idleness living in the tropics and being without a job. I’ve been retired now for close to three weeks, and the time just blazes by. Suddenly it’s mid-day, and it seems like I’ve done nothing. This perception may be a function of several factors: 1) not being bound by the time constraints imposed by someone else so that time seems to flow more fluidly than when it is arbitrarily segmented by the needs of another person or institution; and 2) the absence of stress which, for better or worse, makes one hyperaware of time.
The key, then, is to keep track of the list and make sure to do at least a few things on the list each day. So on my newly edited list (taking out the things that I have already finished from the original list), this is where I am. The bold items are ones that I have already started and do regularly.
1.Check email and respond on time
2.Read the news feeds from the internet
3.Work on cyberbali.com
4.Work on a podcast
5.Participate on the forums
6.Exercise
7.Wake the kids up for school
8.Clean the top two floors of the house
9.Repair the beach house
10.Work on the second draft of the novel
11.Read
12.Make notes for the book on Islam
13.Watch a lot of baseball
14.Visit friends
15.Shop with Su at the market once a week
16.Make dinner once a week
17.Learn how to do graphic art
18.Play computer games
19.Learn Balinese
20.Improve my Indonesian to college level
21.Take a marine biology class on the internet
22.Learn how to write Java so that it actually works correctly
23.Learn Arabic
24.Help the kids with their homework
25.Spend more time with my wife
26.Make some videos
27.Write free lesson plans for teachers
28.Look for freelance jobs on the internet
29.Keep track of the budget
30.Get involved in one save the planet project
31.Sleep
32.Remember how lucky I am to be here
33.Research different conceptions of time
34.Attend mosque regularly
35.Update my eBooks.
So with less than three weeks of free time under my belt, I’ve started 14 of the 35 items on my list. It’s always nice to get some quantitative measure of what’s going on. I wonder how do other folks in retirement in the tropics spend their time.
