Making Time

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I saw the Doctor last week about the biceps pain I've been struggling with since before Christmas. It transpires it's a partial tear rather than the sprain I had suspected and although I can tell it is healing, albeit slowly, my left arm continues to feel incredibly weak. All that effort I put in to stay fit and one muscle chooses to repay me with an injury and eight weeks of rest from lifting anything with it 

As ever, I've found the silver lining in the form of my tax return which, freed from some of my regular gym classes, I've been able to complete and submit with breathing space before the 31st January deadline. The weather has been exceptionally cold too, so I've snuggled down with a book for a couple of hours every day and ticked four off my reading list for the year. With those, a birthday lunch, non-weight-bearing classes, tidying up after the festive period's visitors and sorting various issues for my elderly mum, I've not been exactly idle.

Despite my last post, however, I haven't made much progress in planning out 2026. I love the scope for flexibility and impetuosity that a blank calendar can bring but also know that it's very easy to lose any sense of drive and direction without a well formed strategy. While there are so many things I'd like to be doing in the longer term, the immediate reality is different when I feel the pressure to be available to support the needs of others. Experience suggests, however, that to avoid living a life of duress, it's when the demands build that it really is important to have formulated your own personal plans. 

I'm still not inclined to write a bucket list but with the tax return done and spare time with absences from the gym, now must indeed be the time to contemplate future objectives. Retirement is too precious to be squandered. After all, who knows when the next injury or affliction might arise?

Thrown into a similar dilemma two years ago, I reached out on this blog to analyse my progress in retirement against the initial plans I had set out back in 2014. Today I feel little interest in an historic reflection. It is living in the present and the direction into the future that captivate and interest me. As Alan Lakein, the time management guru said, "Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now," whilst "Failing to plan is planning to fail."

It sounds like my tomorrow is now sorted.

Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay




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