“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.
Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.
So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.
Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever.” ~ Neil Gaiman
I am at the end of the longest vacation I have taken in years. I kind of think of it as my pre-retirement test run. But to do that, I’d need to take more than just a nine-day run. The time has gone very fast. And I haven’t done as much as I’d hoped I would.
During this time I spent time with family, read, blogged, listened to music more than I have in a while. Suzy and I have fixed two light fixtures in the house, two coat hooks that needed to be mounted more securely, pulled vocal music to add to my big band library.
We have also pulled charts for an upcoming MJJO gig, This a performance that was won at a charity gig we did last year. I’ve also send welcome email to the new bassist, drummer, and guitarist who will be joining the band this year. Suzy and I have played some duets together from Greg Fishman’s “Saxophone Jazz Duets, vol III” collection. I use these books to work on my sight reading skills.
I also published six videos from the “In the Mood” theater production from earlier this month. The pictures were taken by my friend Jennifer Murray, a professional photographer. The video was taken by my daughter Josie.
I go back and forth in my head—will I be happy as a retired person? I’ve been working for over 40 years now. My father worked until he turned 73. Now that’s a record to be proud of. My brothers indicate that they don’t plan to retire anytime soon. My sister retired at 55 and from all appearances, she is loving it.
So I enter 2014 with more questions than answers. I did find this Wikipedia article that lists the statutory retirement age in different countries. In some contexts, the retirement age is the age at which a person is expected or required to cease work and is usually the age at which they may be entitled to receive superannuation or other government benefits.
Suzy and I purchased some Omron pedometers and we are calculating the number of steps we take per day. On our holiday, not leaving the house days we are both around 5000 steps a day with about 2000 with aerobic value (longer than ten minutes with more than 60 steps per minute). I am keen to see what my numbers will be when I return to work on Thursday. I walk miles to and from the bus stop, work, and home. That is by design so that I counteract, to some degree, the number of hours I spend sitting at a computer, typing away.
Happy New Year peeps.
The Bis Key Chronicles 