Rob, You've hit a good point. I don;t want to give up retirement but a consultant job of about three days a week would be nice. There's a lot to be said for stimulating your mind and facing stress that keeps your blood red.
Very true. I've always considered retirement as an opportunity to continue to work, doing projects which are more meaningful than one's regular job, although without pay.
My retirement coincided with the rapid development of computer systems and digital photography in the 1990's. After retirement from my regular job in the Public Service, I spent a lot of time learning how to use the computer. I even learned how to build my own computer from individual parts, in order to save on expenses.
During my adult life, I'd accumulated several hundred negatives and slides depicting scenes in foreign countries from the 1960's onward. Scanning all those slides and negatives, and learning how to get the best results, and re-scanning when affordable scanners in the market improved, has been a major project.
I first joined this site in the 1990's, not to have interminable discussions about cameras and the artistic merits of photos, but simply to get help in producing a print on my Epson printer which matched the colour and contrast that I saw on my computer monitor. I'd complained to the Epson technical department that I was having great difficulty in getting a print that matched what I saw on my computer screen. They advised me the situation was complicated and that I should try to get help from a specialized photographic site such as Luminous Landscape, which I did, and I learned about the concepts of colour and monitor calibration.
20 years later I've accumulated almost 10,000 posts on LL, and possibly more because the very early posts were not always carried forward when the LL system was upgraded. Since many of my posts have been quite long, this represents more than a 1,000 page book, such as Bertrand Russell's 'History of Western Philosophy'. Perhaps even a couple of them.
My renewed interest in Photography after retirement, and the pleasure of viewing old photos in high resolution after scanning, inspired me to revisit some of those countries I'd photographed in the 1960's, such as Thailand, Cambodia and Nepal, and take yet more photos with my digital cameras. I was also inspired to travel to new countries I hadn't visited before.
I've now accumulated a huge number of digital photos in RAW mode. Organising them all, and backing them up on external hard drives is a continuing project.
However, I also have other interests in my retirement. I have a 5 acre property in the country side, which is now a sort of 'weekend retreat', but was initially a Permaculture Project. I found that I simply didn't have enough time to manage all the projects I was interested in, which also included playing the piano, so I stopped playing the piano (probably after realising I wasn't particularly talented
), and stopped maintaining my permaculture garden, letting whatever I'd planted thrive or die in accordance with Darwin's theory of evolution. Remarkably, Papayas and Lady Finger bananas have thrived without any maintenance.
However, some degree of maintenance of the property is required. I've spent a lot of time in recent years cutting down trees which would be in danger of collapsing on my house during a storm. Just recently, a few weeks ago, there was a storm which brought down the overhead power line to my property, due to trees falling over the power line. Refer attached photos of the damage.
Before getting the power line reconnected, I decided to cut down other trees in the vicinity which could disrupt the power supply during a future storm. All the fallen trees will be cut up by me in order to create a Hugelkultur mound. Yet another project.
https://permaculturenews.org/2012/01/04/hugelkultur-composting-whole-trees-with-ease/I've got so many projects, including taking care of my ex-wife, time is not speeding up for me at all.
Oops! I'm also interested in Buddhism, and I've just realised I might be contradicting Buddhist principles by boasting.
