Creating Daily Structure

OLLI has suspended for the summer.  A lingering professional albatross lifted at about the same time.  So I enter the summer with considerable liberty and security, more than I have enjoyed in a while.  My OLLI commitments, though, also provided needed structure in retirement.  My class schedule required me to commute from home to the campus most weekdays, then pay attention as the lectures or DVDs were presented.  I would often schedule an errand following class, sometimes supermarket or maybe retrieve a prescription, or even occasionally seek out lunch.  I had to be at a place at a set time.  On most Saturday mornings, shabbos services provided that time structure, at least for the morning.  Without these, I am left with my treadmill schedule as the main source of self appointments, not counting an ongoing commitment to myself to arise each morning at a fixed hour.  In the summer, even on treadmill days, by 9AM there are no places I need to be each day.

A list of what I want to do each day still gets listed the night before and reviewed each morning while I sip my first cup of coffee.  An opportunity to do more of these items without that pesky schedule telling me when I need to get dressed and into the car.  But having to work around those fixed obligations forces me to assign times to do things that have no deadlines.

I must take best advantage of these lazy, hazy days of summer, starting by restoring some of the structure no longer present during OLLI's summer break.  I've scheduled two appointments, one to get a Senior SEPTA Pass which adds to my freedom.  With this I can arrange museum visits, now timed, and a couple of bus trips to NYC over the summer.  I've scheduled a platelet donation.  And I am almost ready to assign some days to drive downstate to the beaches.  Some doctor's appointments have places on my calendar, and a couple more ought to be added.  I have a presentation to give for the synagogue, the lecture having an assigned place and time, though its preparation does not.

More likely, though, I will need to create an artificial time structure.  At a certain time I will write, record, upgrade the house, garden, cook, or shop.  Not too rigid, but time-bound in some short-term way.