Here we are at the end of another week, well almost. Tomorrow is Friday which counts as the end of the week for the majority of those that toil from 9:00 to 5:00. Some wise man once said that “Time flies when you are  having fun” and this is certainly the case in my life. As a retired person, I can personally vouch for the fact that time is a two dimensional thing. One is when you are a working person and the hours between 9:00 to 5:00 simply crawl along at a snail’s pace. The second is when you are on vacation from that same dreaded job or playing a game and your team is losing or when you are retired. I can guarantee that time goes at least twice as fast in the cases outlined.

When I wake up, I have to think really hard to remember what day it is and unless I have an appointment that I need to keep, one day is very much like the other. Even Saturday and Sunday that once upon a time were such special days especially when I was still an active athlete and games were played on the weekend, are just the same as any other day of the week. No, I take that back as the English Premier League plays its games over the weekend giving me something to watch for the rest of the week.

Every day is a Monday or Wednesday or Friday or whatever is the most favorite day of the week. I make my own honey-dews and then do them at my leisure and if I don’t feel like doing something today, then it can wait until tomorrow. Unless of course as long as it is not something earth shattering like a leak in the pond or something like.

The same is true of time itself. When you are not on a work schedule, getting up early to make the trip through the dreaded Austin traffic to arrive miserable and ill tempered at your place of employment, does not happen when you are retired. The same is true of the trip home passing the same cars as you did going in the opposite direction in the morning. When you are retired and this is probably true only for single retired people, there is no traffic to fight or alarm to go off and getting up is determined by circumstances and the need to be up and about. Going to bed is usually after watching your favorite movie or ball game and not watching the clock. Like I said, this is probably true of old single men as if there are wives in the picture, life retired or otherwise starts to get complicated.

We are all creatures of habit as I used to say to the young soccer players when I was an active coach. My job then was to teach them good habits on the soccer field in both how they played, the skills they developed and how they reacted to other players. Life is like that. We all do practically the same thing every day from the time we get up to the time we go to bed. We get up and shower and get dressed doing the same as we did yesterday and the day before. We usually put on our clothes the same way every day and then grab coffee and if there is time, even breakfast at home. Or our routine includes stopping at the nearest Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts and grabbing something to go. Then we fight the traffic.

Life is all about routines and we can quickly get befuddled when someone or something breaks that routine. I am used to going to bed around midnight and then getting up around 9:00 am. This is my routine and it is a habit that I have formed these past few years. When I need to break that routine for whatever reason like having an early appointment, it throws off my whole day and it takes getting up at the same time the next day to put things back into their proper order.

Being able to recognize the fact that time is two dimensional does not make it any easier. Based on my theories, us retired folks only have half as much time to spend as the working people. Hours for us are made up of something different than 60 minutes. I’m guessing, more like 45 minutes and then another hour is off the clock. The same is true when we were very young. Time was much slower except during the summer holidays when the 6 weeks we used to have in England were gone in a month and I firmly believed that I would never grow up.

One thing we can be sure. All of our clocks whether they be keeping younger time, regular time or old age retired time are all heading in the same direction and each and everyone will arrive it’s desired point at some given pre-ordained time. Then our own personal clocks will stop and we will no longer be concerned how fast or how slow or how quickly the weekend goes or the week drags on.

In the meantime, enjoy what we have left to us and to hell with worrying about it. Live life to its fullest and be damned with the time.