When I first announced I was going to retire the most common reaction I received beyond congratulations was a dubiously phrased, “What are you going to do?” Initially, I was caught off guard believing that my interlocutor thought my plan to retire was somewhat suspect. So, in response I would list off the many activities that I engage in, including photography and guitar playing/learning to prove I was worthy of retirement…
Then after I while I became fatigued with trying to prove that I was prepared to retire, and instead stated that, “I would do whatever I wanted to do, whenever I wanted to…” which, so far, has been pretty much the case within the resources I want to allocate to the “whatever I want to do” aspect of my time spent.
It’s actually a little more complicated than that… Though it initially it seemed that time is available to do anything/anytime, there are still chores around the house like cleaning and yard upkeep, as well as time at the gym to avoid backsliding health wise… Nevertheless, I do have dedicated activities that I hold sacrosanct and one of them is reading…
I’ve been a devoted reader almost all my life… perhaps when I was a nascent reader it was a little rocky, but by the time I was 10 years old. Ian Fleming and Edgar Rice Burroughs enchanted me into a world of fiction where all things are possible… I am still there in that fantastic world of spies, detectives, space ships and time travelers… I found the vintage paperback covers to some of my gateway books into a life of escape reading…
So, I’ve lead the life of a voracious reader… to prove the point, I was not a lit. major in college, but I managed to take a lit. class almost every semester, including classes devoted to Shakespeare, Greek Tragedy, the Literary Significance of the Bible, and Late 19th Century American Literature…
The fact is, my dedication to literature is a bit of a problem… there is no room in my home for anymore books yet I keep buying them…. I really should read more books on my Kindle, but I feel suffocated and constrained when I read books electronically… I like to flip ahead sometimes and that is difficulty with an electronic reader…
I have to make way sometimes by disposing books… some I give away to friends, others get deposited at the local library’s Book Nook… most if the books I toss off are not what I call keepers… I still hang onto the books that are “classics” or ones that really affected me.
Some of the giveaways make a difference. Yesterday, Coach Chip, a young man who coached my son Parker in club basketball when he was in early grade school and who subsequently gave him private lessons in our driveway shared on FB that his “travel” team just one second place in a tournament. I know how hard Coach Chip works and congratulated him. His response was: “All because of the book you gave me!” Well, I think there’s more to it than that but it was fun to hear from Chip. Below you can Coach Chip and the book I gave him… It was a first edition of Dean Smith’s Basketball: Multiple Offense and Defense.
