Tick Tock Not

When you retire, you feel an aura of freedom all around. At last you can arise when it's natural, eat and go where and when you want to. Of course, there are some time elements to keep such as appointments and social obligations, but otherwise, why, you say, spoil your freedom? One morning as I listened to the alarm clock buzzing me up to meet a friend for our morning seaside walk, I gave my head a shake and asked myself, what are you doing? I said to myself, are you mad, you are retired and here you are making schedules like this one to get up at six so that you can go for a walk? At that point, I made a decision to stop scheduling most of the events in my life that really do not need to be timed. After reviewing all of the unnecessary dates such as the Friday Dinner and a Movie, the coffee shop ritual in the morning and others, I determined to simply get up in the morning when enough sleep was gained, do household chores as I pleased and un-time meetings with others. I promised myself, I would inform my friends and acquaintances that I would no longer be meeting specific time frames but would come and go, more or less, in a similar way, while calling them up to go for a walk or a coffee or a visit but not on-schedule. If they were uncomfortable with that arrangement, it was their choice. For me, minutes were going to become a thing of the past. I would more or less go for the stroll sometime in the morning but take my own car to the location and perhaps meet them later for coffee when I finished the walk. To test the new move, this morning I awoke without looking at the clock and went about preparing for my wharf walk. The feeling of not trying to beat the clock and working to get out to meet my friend at a specific minute, was liberating. If I wanted to take a bit more time donning my running shoes or fiddling with my hair, I jolly well did. When I got into the car to drive down the hill, I found that the road was closed, but no worry. I just ambled the car off to another way down and didn't need to care about having to meet someone at any appointed time. While on the walk, I had the leisure to enjoy gazing at the eagle perched on his look-out for as long as I pleased and I peered over the railing, looking down into the salt chuck at the crabs crawling among the sea grasses and the starfish clinging to their rocks. No clocks were ticking. I went home rather than going over to the coffee shop and made my own version of a latte. Ahhh. It was so very relaxing. I have to confess, however, that when I did peek at the clock, for scientific reasons only, surprisingly, the times  were almost exactly the same! Nevertheless, tomorrow again, no tick tock clock for me.