Today is Monday. Two weeks ago I vowed that on every Monday until I stop working I will write a list of five things I will do when I retire. I know one thing I will not do when I retire. I will NOT promise to do lists every Monday.
It seemed easy enough when I started out. But even in the beginning I screwed up. I figured I would have to come up with 30 things (5 x 6 Mondays), but somehow I miscounted what were actually eight Mondays. So it's 40 things I need to come up with. The problem is that after only 10, I am already asking people to suggest things to add to the list.
Linda thinks the list should include clipping my toenails every week. Given the scars on her calves, I can understand why she feels that way, but that isn't really the sort of list I was thinking of putting together.
My father, with his 80+ years of wisdom, suggested that I have a bowel movement every day. Again, that isn't exactly the sort of list I was thinking about. And in fact if Linda keeps putting jalapenos in our food, the challenge will be to have only one each day,
Despite the less than lofty ideas being put forward by my family, I will today soldier on and add five more items to the list. Since much of what I want to do with my time in retirement is to write books, today's list will be five things I will research and learn more about as I investigate topics for my writing.
1. The Cracks in the World.
Ever since Linda and I read Simon Winchester's "Crack In the Edge of the World" and "Krakatoa", we have been smitten with the idea of checking out the places where the earth's fault lines exist. At first, I thought this was just Linda's excuse to visit San Francisco, but she's definitely into checking out Iceland, Indonesia and other geological hot spots. I am, too. It might make an interesting travel book.
2. Teachers
I am probably prejudiced because I studied to be a teacher and loved doing it. Everyone feels teachers are the key to our children's futures, and yet with crappy pay and weirdly run school systems, we do nothing to attract our brightest university students. I think it would be worth figuring out what is going on and what we can do to fix it. It will also be interesting to see if there are significant differences between US and Australian systems.
3. Cousins
I have something like 50 first cousins. Most of that number are from the Kennedy clan. Thank God my mother's side were Protestants, or I could have had 100 cousins, I suppose. For years I have thought how interesting it would be to put together profiles of each of them and get a sense of how my generation developed and how we changed the family of which we were a (very) large part.
4. True Crime
There are some interesting crime stories here in Australia that may or may not be worth researching. I am a sucker for stories about swindlers and con men and Australia always has been home to lots of such people. As interesting as the best true crime books can be, I am just not sure that's where I want to spend my time.
5. Facebook
This is actually research for a paperless work of fiction I am thinking about. I can see setting a story in an online social network, where the only way you can get the full picture is to drill through the web sites of the various characters. To do that, though, I will have to learn Facebook. It may sound simple, but suffice it to say that I signed up a couple of weeks ago to the site dedicated to networking with friends, and I have signed up only one friend, Megan. And until she noticed I was there, I am pretty sure I was setting a record as the least sociable social networker in the history of the site.
Like so much of my life, I seem to have got it twisted around the wrong way. Most people hope to write a best-selling book so they can retire. I hope to retire so I can write a book - admittedly, not likely to be a best seller.
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