Happy Trails, Part 86

I ventured today into a place where I worked part-time for about three years after my newspaper career ended. I have a lot of fond memories of my time at Street Toyota in Amarillo, not to mention a lot of friends.

One of them, a sales manager, and I visited this afternoon for a few moments. “How are you doing?” Matt asked. “What are you doing thee days?” I answered “fine” and “not much.” He thought it was being cryptic and asked, jokingly, if I was “on the run.”

Nope. I didn’t mean to be vague with my friend. But it occurs to me now as it did earlier today that I am no longer attached to many things that I need to do.

We have no hard-and-fast plans. We get to awaken every morning, have our coffee and breakfast at our own pace and then ask ourselves, “What do we want to do today?”

This retirement life is really nice.

My wife and I spent a lot of years working hard to provide for our family and ourselves. This life of ours has produced a new set of challenges, which is deciding how we’re going to spend the day that opens up before us.

Right now our lives of full of chores around our fifth wheel. We’re getting ready to hit the road for a couple of weeks. My wife’s tasks are more complicated than mine as we get ready to embark on our next journey. She takes care of the inside of our RV; my task is to prep the outside.

In the meantime, we spend time just doing … whatever the heck we damn well please!

My friends who still are working for a living lament that their time is so far — too far — into the future. My answer to all of them is essentially the same.

Your time will get here in no time at all. Then you’ll wonder: What the hell just happened to all those years? I also tell them that separation anxiety from whatever they were doing while they were working is vastly overrated.

So there you have it. At this moment, we are living from day to day.

It’s good to be us.