For the first time in 18 months, I am commuting to the city again — just temporarily, while I work on a special project for which I need to be on-site — and after so many months of commuting all the way from my bed to my desk, I don’t know how I ever did this on a daily basis! Most glaringly, it feels more tiring physically, although my step-counter tells me that I walk just as much in my at-home routine (where I take long walks daily) as I do commuting (walking .6/m to the station, and 1.1m uptown to the office) — but the psychic exertion of commuting is much greater. I must constantly monitor the time in order to make my trains; I must pack and lug my heavy office bag; and in Manhattan, there are constant obstacles and fellow pedestrians to dodge.
In many ways, of course, it all feels very familiar — though there are far fewer of us pounding the pavement now than pre-pandemic, and many of the businesses I pass on route are closed, their windows papered over and hung with OUT OF BUSINESS and FOR RENT signs. I think of the people who used to make the lunches I bought, who sold me fruit and bagels from carts on the street, and checked out my books at the shuttered NY Public Library branch, and they seem somehow precious, if now very distant. Their lives were upended far more than mine by the events of 2020-21, through no fault of their owAs I devote nearly three hours daily to a commute which has been unnecessary for the last year and a half, I find myself wondering how I have used that time during my days at home. What do I have to show for it? When we first ‘went out’ (as we seem to say), I was full of projects — I refinished our dining room table, and did the world’s best spring garden clean-up — but I didn’t sustain the additional effort as the lockdown, at first shocking and unprecedented, became our long-term reality. If this is how we’re living now, why must I frantically exploit it?
When I took a week off after breaking my jaw in 2020, I remember thinking the idle at-home week would be a good test of how I’d use my time in retirement — a notion which now seems preposterous! But I’d never been home for a whole week before, except when I had new babies, which was scarcely downtime! It was a complete novelty to have seven days yawning empty before me — no wonder I felt I had to make the most of them. (And I did — I revived this blog, I painted and made collages, I read, and I learned to make various smoothies, which were all I could eat with my jaw wired shut.)
As a dry run of retirement, my broken jaw week is far eclipsed by lockdown and our continuing months at home. And how has it gone? My automatic answer at first would have been ‘not well,’ since I felt I was wasting those three extra hours every day. But gradually, my thinking has changed. No, I haven’t gone soft or lazy — I’m actually saner now that I’m not compelled to make the absolute most of every free second. I’ve discovered my inner Type B personality!
I’m still nervous about retirement. Not so much the money — I have saved like a fiend for decades and am able to live pretty frugally — but about losing the purpose and structure which a job provides. But I feel a little better after learning these lockdown lessons.
Linnetontheleaf 
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