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Jalan-Jalan with Jerwin in Singapore

Jalan-Jalan with Jerwin in Singapore
Photo by Jerwin Allen Malabanan
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Sunday, July 27, 2014

A Preview of My Retirement from Work

Sunday, July 27, 2014

Slept ten hours last night, the first time I've been able to do so again after a month. I very much look forward to doing this as often as I can upon my retirement, which will be in a little more than seven months from now. Oversleeping truncates my day but makes me feel completely rested and healed, and I have the option of staying up late at night and do some writing--except for tonight, of course, since I am still employed and must reset my alarm for a full week in the office.

I am jumping out of my skin to retire because:

--I am fed up with commuting and do not want to ride in yet another train or bus.
--I am 63 and will have given 36 years of service to the office by the time I retire--that is more than half my age and I want to live the rest of my life for myself.
--I wish to live the rest of my life without a supervisor and co-workers.
--I need to finish more cyberspace books, novels, paintings, and short stories before I say goodbye.

The biggest irony about my prospective, post-retirement life is that many of the consultancy offers I have been receiving entail my traveling far away from home. I made it clear to all that distance and salary are of no concern to me as long as I am transported to and from my home each time. Yes, you can only have me via door-to-door shipment. The traffic situation in this metropolis is hopeless, and has become a cause of anxiety, dysfunction, and mental disorder to others.

It is a languid day for me, yet another advance experience of my retirement, when I can enjoy a one-hour breakfast, a two-hour lunch, and a two-hour supper. Time is wealth and health. I can't wait to be rich and in good shape.

The cable company to which my TV is subscribed has been having connectivity problems since last week. I am unable to tune in to the news and to old movies, but I am appreciative of the stillness and the silence. It is an apt transition from a week in Marinduque to a week in Metro Manila. So must we value our weekends. They are not ends but pre-beginnings, providing us time to recap, to summarize, to synthesize, to align and center ourselves, in preparation for the days ahead.

I am now at the kitchen table writing in my TinTin notebook and having a cup of brown, Baguio tea. The pages of the notebook have been filling up with black-ink scribbles from my dragon pens. It has occurred to me that, once I have consumed and torn off all its sheets, its covers can be used as a file folder to contain my ideas for as-yet-unwritten short stories. Should I decide to buy more of them, their covers could contain other ideas for novels, magical spells, paintings, workshop syllabi, and house improvement.

While still employed I can write only two hours a day. This is the same advice I give my creative writing workshop participants, as I advise my art students to sketch anatomical figures also a minimum of two hours a day. One begins writing and drawing for oneself, as in a diary. Posted in cyberspace they become available to the world and are accessed by others, whether on purpose or by accident. Whichever way that happens, you manage to touch their lives by what your heart was saying.

In the end, you write not really for yourself but for your fellow human beings, long after you have affixed the period to your last sentence.


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