When my mom retired at age 65 in 1994, I looked forward to her making several trips to northeast Indiana to visit her favorite son and daughter-in-law and some of her favorite grandchildren.
For the record, I am her only son and Susan is her only daughter-in-law. She had three grandchildren here in the Hoosier State and she also had three more closer to her home in Illinois.
Anyway, she made one trip over to Indiana by herself. She did not come to Bluffton at all after we had moved to the Parlor City, darn it. She remained physically able for several years, but she couldn’t make the trip because she was too busy.
Too busy? She was retired, for crying out loud. How could she be too busy?
Well, as I am finding out for myself, there are a lot of things to keep a retiree or even an almost-retiree busy.
My schedule right now is loaded with this and that. I’m still working, so there’s meetings to attend and write up and the other things involved in being a part of what goes on in a newsroom. There are doctor’s appointments. There are my spouse’s doctor’s appointments. There are other activities I long to participate in.
Until recently, I had no way to keep track of things.
Friends say they know I have a smart phone and I also have an iPad. It would be nice if I could put things on those electronic devices to keep track of what’s going on, with an alarm going off to remind me, but I often do not have my iPad with me and the keys of my iPhone are so small that it takes me an hour to put two or three things into it.
Having failed to keep up with things via electronic means, I’m going old school. I dug through the file cabinet next to my desk and found a three-ring binder. I printed out blank calendar sheets for the remaining months of 2023 and the first two months of 2024.
I had tried to go old school with a calendar provided by a local business, but I (a) lost it for quite a while and (b) can’t write small enough to make sense of what’s in it. On Feb. 15, there was an illegible event written down for 2 p.m. I know what the time was but not where the event was or who I was supposed to meet with. The time and the day came and went and nobody called to yell at me.
So the bigger calendar should pay off.
This three-ring binder has some significance to me. When I first joined the News-Banner, I used it to keep track of things. As I learned about the people and the places of Bluffton and Wells County, I would put notes in the pockets of the three-ring binder. For some reason — probably because I thought I knew it all — I stopped using it in 2017. I know that because the last calendar sheet said December of 2017 on it.
Now I’m trying to put everything together. All those doctor’s appointments and work assignments. Church community group meetings. Grandchildren’s athletic events. Sunday morning speaking requests.
Now … where is that three-ring binder?
daves@news-banner.com
