Feeling Lazy

I'm using the picture that I posted in my last post as a screen saver. I look at it often as I sit here in my office. I think my 3 weeks in Malawi have somehow slowed me down. Ever since we returned to Ottawa, I find that I'm sleepy alot. I'm calling it Malawi Malaise. It was summer when we were there; it was hot, humid and sunny most days. In general, we loved the fact it was like summer in Ottawa. At night, however, we found it hard to sleep under our mosquito nets as it didn't cool off much, there is no air conditioning, often not even a fan, and we were sleeping in strange beds. Maybe I'm just making up for lost sleep.

I was talking with a friend in Toronto by phone recently and explained to her that although I seem to have lots of energy in the morning, by early afternoon I just feel sort of lazy. Not that this phenomenon is all that new. I've always had a low point after lunch where my ability to initiate anything other than perhaps a shopping trip is almost non-existent. She says she feels the same way. We compared notes and agreed that without intense deadlines and pressures to force us to be productive, we lean towards lazy. I reflect on this often as I think about what retirement from work is really like for people and also what it's going to be like for me. Don't get me wrong. I really like having control over my time, with a tendency to work in the morning and goof off in the afternoon. But some days I feel that I just let the time slip through my fingers. What if I wasn't working any more at all. Would I do even less each day?

Compared to the challenges some people face in life, I know that these are pretty nice issues to have to work through. And I think it's good for me as a retirement planner to be facing some of the same challenges some retirees face as they transition from a life of full time work or even part time work into full retirement. I haven't got it all worked out for myself yet, but if I'd only take the advice I give to others, I'm sure I'd find the answer!