I'm finishing work in three days' time. For good. (Well, I've no plans to work any more, in fact very few plans to do anything at all). I'm retiring after working for the same organisation for nearly 40 years, so I'm expecting it to be quite a shock to the system. In fact, it struck me (all of a heap) this week that I don't really know who I am, but I certainly am about to find out. I hope I'm not the lazy person I know who crashes out and colonises the sofa when not at work. I hope I'll read, and sing, and ring bells, and go to London, and lunch, and travel ... and ... and ... Oh, and join committees. I copped one only this evening.
The past couple of years have been quite tough going. Work has been stressful, and it filled my mind. It has been a time of huge and not very agreeable change in my professional world. People have been hating what I and my colleagues have had to do, and I've had to summon up all my powers of persuasion to convince them that we're trying to make the best of a difficult situation and are still succeeding in doing great work. I couldn't talk publicly about a lot of what my working life was like, and didn't want to if I could. So that has been a bit of an obstacle to making anything of this blog.
But now, I have all this time stretching out to fill with things that please me, for a change. That is, once I've stopped saying 'Yes' to everybody (must rid myself of that habit). And I want to write about it and show pictures of it and post links to it.
I'm really looking forward to picking up this blog again!
