Getting Back to It: Post Manic Life
I'm Back
A former colleague once told me, "When you see a swimming pool, you don't dip your toe in. You do a cannonball." When I rediscovered blogging a few years ago, I started accumulating domains like bad habits. I went five hundred straight days writing three blog posts every 24 hours, and a good chunk of that was before I finally retired from my job at the university where I worked. Every day was a blank sheet of paper, and I always figured out a way to fill it.
The secret to maintaining that pace is a well-managed case of bipolar disorder and riding a long stretch on the manic side for all it's worth. The reality is that it always eventually ends. It's not a bottomless well. There's definitely a bottom. I didn't stop writing because I ran out of things to say. I stopped because the engine that was running that hard finally idled back down to a normal speed, which, it turns out, is really a healthier place to live. I don't miss the pace, but I do miss the interaction with folks that writing all those posts gave me.
My first attempt at retirement started during COVID and turned out to be a disaster. I had done no real planning and had no idea how to fill my time. I never really found anything, and consequently, I basically squandered a couple of years.
So I went back to work in the same field where I spent my career. I had a good stretch in the IT department at a small private university, glad for the extra income and the lack of stress. When it was time to leave, I knew that my second attempt at leisure would be much different from my first. That prediction has come true.
I stay occupied with the things I enjoy. It seems that I get the urge to build or upgrade my self-hosted server about every three months, and I've explored tech topics I avoided for years, like Linux and networking. No one is calling me to change their password, and I don't have to sweet-talk recalcitrant co-workers into accepting two-factor authentication as a fact of modern life.
One of the biggest changes happened just this past month, when Wonder Woman and I moved out of the house where I'd lived for 30 years. Our new place is swankier than anywhere I've ever lived. That's a strange word to type about myself, but our new home has what matters.
It's quiet and on a single level, which my knees now require. It's also much easier for my grandson to roll around in his wheelchair, and for our elderly parents to get into. I miss my friends, the tree rats and birds who entertained me for decades. But I value the strengthened connections this place allows me to have with the fam.
Even though I wasn't writing long blog posts over the past year, I managed to stay connected on Mastodon. I took advantage of the microblogging format to stay in touch with the IndieWeb folks, whom I've come to regard as real friends. Mastodon is probably the healthiest online community I've ever been a part of, and not a day goes by that I don't see something meaningful there.
So that's where I'm at: life at a slow pace. My second retirement is being good to me. I'm still the same guy, and I still hate Nazis. I'm living in a new house with good bones and no stairs. I don't think I'll return to writing three posts a day, or even every day. But I do have that feeling that each morning presents me with a blank piece of paper, and for the first time in a while, I want to put something on it. It's good to be back.
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