Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Post #3309: Rest and retirement
I’ve been sick with a cold since mid-week. Brian brought it home from Ottawa on Sunday, and by Wednesday the tell-tale signs—sore throat, exhaustion—were upon me. I still had to work yesterday even though I wasn’t really fit to; my manager’s mom died a few weeks ago and I’ve been in charge since then. There were too many things to attend to, and since I work from home I managed a nap in the middle of the day to keep myself going. But I was resentful anyway—resentful that I had to work when all I wanted to do was lie down and rest. As soon as I signed off for the day, I slept a solid two hours on the couch before dinner (toast and avocado).
Today is my flex Friday so I am off work, and on the couch with laptop and books – a motherlode of which came in for me at the library this week, so I am well stocked. I am the level of sick in which there is the secret pleasure in the excuse to “do nothing”. Not so sick as to be incapacitated, but sick enough that no one will expect anything from me. Plus, I’m pretty sure I’m still contagious so it’s best I don’t interact with the world right now. I recognize my privilege in having no one to look after, and having a warm and clean home in which to loiter away these hours of sniffles—it allows me to actually take care of myself which is something a lot of us never get to do.
Something else a lot of folks never get to do, is retire from working life – something on my mind this week since I’ve received my official letter indicating my eligibility to retire early – even earlier than I had planned. (Two to three years from now was my retirement date). My employer, the federal government, who I have reported to dutifully since I was 25 years old (but first started working for as a student when I was only 23) has devised a plan aimed exactly at people in my situation—between 50 and 55 with a significant amount of pensionable year – in an attempt to move us out of the workforce and thus forestall layoffs for younger workers. Under this plan, the details of which are emerging slowly—I would be able to retire in less than a year without incurring any financial penalty (we are penalized 5% per year of retiring before 55 and 30 years of service, this plan eliminates that). That means retirement when I am only 53, about 18 months ahead of schedule, and being able to collect my full pension immediately upon that date.
Of course I plan to apply for approval to do this program—I have a big life outside of work that I’ve been that I’ve been itching to spend more time in for most of my working years. But I also find this opportunity arriving while I am still young enough to be at the apex of my career and at the beginnings of a multi-year project I would like to complete. Life being what it is, the timing feels a bit off even as I wonder that maybe this is exactly when the shift is meant to happen. For while I know I am valued and I currently get to select the projects I work on, I also know that layoffs and organizational change are happening all around me right now – and it could very quickly become the case that work is miserable again and I am counting the hours to leaving. Perhaps doing all the planning for a big project, but then leaving as the execution of it begins is *exactly* what I need to do – before the urgency and troubleshooting of said project is upon me.
Because one thing is true: even though I’m young to be retiring, a lifetime of work has left me depleted. Sitting in front of screens, troubleshooting, writing and editing, project managing—these activities drain my creative life, and even in the very short stints I take for vacation, I notice how much more creative output I’m capable of. In my entire working life—since I was 15 years old—I’ve never taken more than two weeks off at a time. I never took a gap year or months to travel overseas, never took a sabbatical in which to find myself. And when I think about that, I get very exhausted indeed—the sheer amount of bullshit one has to push through in a lifetime of getting up and going to work every day, and the amount of life one must push to the side to accommodate that work, is staggering.
My need for a nap has arrived again, so I’m not sure I can finish these thoughts cogently except to say – may we find a way to a world in which all of us can toil less and rest more.
Post #3308: Breathing song
It’s not the greatest photo, but it captures a really nice set that Brian and I played last night at the open mic. On rare occasions when I play, I tune into the breathing of the music – letting the phrasing unfold organically as though the song is a living being, tuning into the natural shape and timing emerging from another player or the song itself. Last night was like that – my part improvised and deeply in sync with some other power that governs the acoustic world. Sometimes the magic shows up even though the night is routine. If we don’t play, it never arrives.
Post #3307: Crossroads
I had a very busy weekend, and somehow managed to take no photos of any of it – so I’m leading this morning with a photo taken down the road from our cabin in October. Between the yellows of autumn and the first frosts which visited when we are there – it suggests to me exactly the transition between fall and winter we are in on the coast right now.
Transitions are much on my mind these days as I travel through (what I hope are) the last months of perimenopause, watch my parents become truly elderly, witness an old friend in what I think might be end-stage liver disease, think about my own transition between work and whatever comes afterwards. The last couple years I have been fully living my life, but with an eye to the seismic shifts I know are on the horizon – what will my life look like after I have experienced certain losses, or am not required to work for the first time since I was 15 years old?
I’m suspended in a kind of liminal space with all of it right now…. the aspect of change I’ve always found the hardest. It feels like standing at a crossroads, waiting to see which direction life will ask me to go. Some paths I’ll choose for myself; others will simply arrive, and I’ll have no choice but to meet them without stumbling around too much.
William Bridges writes ““We resist transition not because we can’t accept the change, but because we can’t accept letting go of that piece of ourselves that we have to give up when … the situation has changed.” And not only a piece of ourselves, but a way we’ve lived our lives or the people we’ve with in those lives.
In the meantime, what can we do? I work, I exercise, I attend to my community responsibilities, and I make art – hoping these things will provide a compass when it becomes time to take the next step forward. I will be curious to see where these journeys take me.
Post #3306: Making a mess
The above photo is a project I’m working on for my field study group on Gabriola – something I conceived of two days ago and now need to get finished before we meet at the end of the month. I don’t want to say yet what it is, but as you can see, it involves making a bit of a mess in the studio as I paint backgrounds and layer collage on with acrylic gel medium. These pages will get a lot more layers before they are “finished” and then cut up into smaller pieces for the end-product I am working towards.
Around two and half years ago I started seeing someone for mental health help – someone I still see even though I’m much better than I was when I started down this road. As part of that exploration, I also took an 8-week class focused on managing anxiety through creating through the arts council here. It was very inexpensive (perhaps even free, but I made a donation), and met once weekly in the arts centre with a counsellor (a different one from mine) and an artist. In that class, we did a bunch of abstract mark-making exercises (collage, paint, crayons) while paying attention to bodily sensations and breathing. What was really great about it for me was that it was not focused on “making art” but on using the tools of art making to tune into the body. I don’t think I kept a single end result of those classes – but I was turned on to a bunch of techniques that I felt I could “do” without a lot of pressure on myself.
Though I have been a maker of things for a long time, until recently I always focused on functional making like home textiles and clothing. While I do not deny there is some “art” in intricate weaving and sewing, my love of those activities was rooted in the fact that they result in beautiful, usable things that I could otherwise not afford to purchase (who can afford handmade/tailored clothing after all?)
After taking the arts council class though, I had an increasing interest in working with other materials, and without a particular end game in mind. Over the last couple of years that has taken me in different exploratory directions – both into functional paper craft (bookmaking) as well as watercolour painting and mixed media. While I do not think of what I’m doing as art in any way (throwing things on the wall and seeing what sticks is more like it), I have found a real love for making a mess in my studio using all the different bits and pieces that come my way. It’s super tactile, uses mostly recycled/found materials, and allows me to be expressive without worrying about accuracy or representation. What I particularly love is the wabi-sabi of it all, the fact that beauty emerges from some fairly random, layered processes with only minimal overthinking/overcriticizing on my part.
I’m excited to see how this particular project comes together, which will involve photocopying this work when it’s done and using the copies to create something for my field school group. Right now it’s in the mess stage, but with a few more layers and processing, I think it’ll turn out to be something more coherent at the end. I’ll share here when that happens!
Post #3305: What next?
The last few days have been a blur of house guests and a weekend-long community event that took over the arts hall with the textile/social/art event Refugia. I’m so grateful for the day off work today to recover from it all and nurse the mild cold I picked up. I slept nearly ten hours from last night until this morning and am puttering in the kitchen with some pressure canning (pinto beans) and dehydrating (apple rings). I have laundry in the dryer and plans to even maybe get the garlic planted before my afternoon workout. We’ll see. It’s nice just taking it easy – something I don’t do often enough.
I’ve been thinking a lot about retirement lately—what I’ll want to do, and what it might be like to live by my own schedule all the time (or at least most of it, there will always be family needs and other musts to attend to, I’m sure). In my entire working life, which began at age 15, I’ve never taken more than two weeks off in a row, except for one month in 1994, when I went to Indonesia. I never took a “gap year” to travel, and I’ve never income-averaged my salary to take an extended break. From 15 until (almost) 53, I’ve lived by the schedules of school and work, fitting everything else around them.
On one hand, I’ve been fortunate with good health, steady work, and family stability that I’ve never had to take extended time off. On the other, I have little idea what it means to live in a less structured way. I’m also very tired of working. Still, I can thank young Megan for prioritizing a job with a good pension above all else, because soon—two and a half years from now, or maybe even sooner—I’ll have the chance to discover what life feels like out of harness, something many people never get to do.
The maybe sooner is what has me thinking about this so actively at the moment, as the government budget announcement last week introduced a program that may allow me to retire a year and a half earlier than planned—by the end of 2026 instead of mid-2028. This is far from a done deal at the moment, first the budget must be voted on, and then the initiative itself explained in more detail—but it’s been an interesting possibility to toy with. What does one do when they aren’t forced into the structure of work? How does one make a structure of their own, that supports one’s own interests and activity?
On a very surface level, I’m not worried about this as I have a lot I want to do, a community of people with whom I work, and a strong dose of internal discipline. But as my shadow knows, there are a lot of things work is covering up for, giving me an excuse not to do or think about. Being busy is one way to avoid the self. Making a lot of noise covers up the quieter questions. And so on. As much as I have always craved freedom from work and routine, it makes me anxious as hell. It’s definitely a case of feeling all the feelings right now.
Having been a union rep for so much of my career, I spent a lot of time talking to people at all stages of their working life, so I know that transitions like this are a process and that my feelings are not unusual. Whether I go in a year or in two and a half years—the unpacking of feelings and fears will be part of the self work that comes with the flow from one part of a life to another.
In the meantime, life goes on and it’s simply nice to have a day off work to recover and rest after a remarkable weekend of people and ideas.
Red Cedar 