Retirement sinks in

I had to do some work for my accountant to sort something for me, and when I wrote down the hours I'm working now - as in paid work - I was shocked. The realisation of what 'retirement' means has slapped me round the face and then beat me up some more.

Since my official announcement, I hardly seem to have worked many hours, let alone days, and yet I've also managed to be in total denial... as in people saying to me 'are you busy?' and the reply is 'oh yes, lots of work things on' when actually I've done very little at all!

I'm also shocked that for the past few weeks I've managed to fill my hours quite adequately, but not with much worthwhile whatsoever. Well ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration, as I have a conference workshop I'm preparing which certainly has taken time, and then I still have my last client to see,  London work to do, my NHS Education work to do... but somehow it's not quite the same as it was a mere month ago.

And so yesterday I decided to make a start on the 'big clean up'. It was with trepidation that I looked at all my files and started to sort them. Amongst all the dross there were: wage slips from 10 years ago, car details of a car I sold in 2007, jag certificates for animals who've been dead for more years than I care to mention, and a whole lot of paperwork from the union that I stopped subscribing to when I left my NHS job back 2008; and all that's just the tip of the paperberg.

Mountain Man was not amused at the mound of paper that now needs to be shredded (he has the shredder in his office) and that's only a fraction of the amount that's still out there. But he was rather pleased when I also found a rather fetching trophy which belongs to him that had somehow found it's way into my 'hoard'.

I wonder what other things are in the depths of my work space? It'll probably take me most of  my retirement to find out!