Retirement/Recycling/ Re-purposing

I think this is going to be an ongoing conversation in much the same way as my hitchhiking in the summer or my occasional comments as to weaving and spinning sometimes sprout a series of monologues within these pages.

I am no longer an employee of anything. While I have some administrative bits and pieces to do next Monday and Tuesday, yesterday was my last day of contact with students. I will miss them. I will miss teaching them, spending time reading and looking for new sources to share. Most of all, I will  miss being challenged by them. Surprisingly, I think I will also miss the performing. Teaching, if nothing else, surely is performance, a play that gets constantly re-written. It has been a great few years. Fleming is a nice place to work, there have always been enough students to keep me hopeful for the future and the money has been great.

When I was at George Brown College 44 years ago, I thought that one day I would like to teach at a college, but I knew that I would need to work for a very, very long time to become anywhere near as knowledgeable as my instructors were. While I applied a couple of times for part time jobs, and in fact did teach one summer college course during the Rae Days, I never really thought that I would get to teach on a regular basis. It wasn't a failed dream - just one that I had lost sight off.  I am grateful that I had the opportunity to teach 12 semesters at the end of my career when I might have had, on the good days, something useful to teach the students about my profession.

But it is time to move on. It is not that I am tired of teaching (people should leave a job well before they get close to not liking it), it is just that I have other stuff to do. I turned 65 last May and there is just too much that I want to do. Work was getting in the way. I was starting to resent not the job or the students but the time that it took away from my playing with wool and from visiting with my grand kids.  

In the past few years I have had to rush back from the west to be here at the beginning of the semester which at Christmas time meant I was only out west for six days. I seldom got to see my grand kids in Sudbury compete at school sports and never perform at a concert. Having more time to travel and more flexibility when I travel will be great. I may not visit any more often - but it might be at better times.

A number of years ago I wrote a detective novel. Not the world's greatest story but it was fun to do and folks who read it said it was interesting. I sent to a number of publishers, at least two of whom said that it was worth submitting but just not to them. I want to edit it a bit and then get it published on-line. I won't make any money at it - but hopefully some more people will read it. I have a couple of other stories that have been brewing in the back of my head for years. In one case it is just one sentence - but I think I may want to play with it for a few hours here and there.

So much to think about, so much to do....................