I didn't think staying caught up on sleep would be so hard

This retirement thing is harder than I thought. I figured I'd take some vacation, then get into retirement groove, find a routine, and be good to go.

When I'm working, and working out, I'm usually in bed by 9, sometimes earlier. Up at 5. Usually not sleeping the whole night. Busy all day, ready for bed again. It makes for a fast day.

The days go by even faster now. Who knew? I'm trying to get up when I get up, but there's been a surprising number of days I've set the alarm clock. I see no need to drive downtown in rush hour for a swim, so that affects my timing a bit. I've ridden my bike there a few times, which takes a bit of planning.

I've had a couple days where I deliberately planned to do very little, and that's nice. Usually there's something on the schedule. I try to get up and get at it, but a couple things on my list have slipped all week. Really, how difficult can it be to make a phone call and book an appointment?

Today was sleeping in from being up late yesterday (fireworks), then some flower shots, a nice run, (5K in 35 minutes if interested), lunch, working on some macro photos (they will be posted Monday), making some calls to see if something ordered has come in. I found out too late it had, but I wasn't going to drive there on the off chance. So installing that can't happen until Monday. There will be photos.

Yesterday was a nice swim, and a chat with some buddies I see at the pool. One of them tied right into recent blog topics, and it was interesting to get another take on the situation from someone else in the industry.

I certainly don't want to get in a rut, doing the same old same old every day. But part of a fitness routine is that it is a routine. Regular. That hasn't happened so much since my race in June. How can that be two months ago, so fast?? It seems there is always something bumping my schedule around. Oh well, it just makes life more interesting.

One bit of interesting was my uncle contacting me via Facebook. I'd hand written (HAND WRITTEN people, when was the last time you hand wrote a letter?) a letter to my Granny who will be 98 later this year. I made the mistake of mentioning the writing. She's been on my case about the book I've been writing since shortly after starting it. My regular readers will know that book is far older than this blog, and has undergone far more revision and transformation. It's oscillated between being a techno thriller, a love story, and a mystery. It's opened and expanded out into a far bigger story, but what's important about it being a book is that it's not a commercial property. I couldn't easily market it, mainly because it isn't an easily defined genre, and worse, it doesn't follow a standard plot outline. That makes editors nervous.

It's also huge, something on the order of 350K words. After some back and forth with my uncle, I sent hime a text file for The Bone in the Digester. He went back and forth with it on his laptop to find an app that would open it and look like something Granny might read. Well, no. It took less time than the laptop took starting, for Granny to decide it wasn't a book, and she wasn't going to read it on screen. She wanted paper in her hands.

Sorry, Granny, it's not going to happen. I am not going to kill a bunch of trees to print out a draft copy, and put a dent in my bank account mailing it. Neither am I going to burden other relatives with the concept of taking a file to a local printshop and transporting the resulting pile of paper to Granny. Just my luck she wouldn't like a mound of paper either, because it isn't a bound book.

The current work is about a new character, and I don't know him and the people around him as well as I know my other characters. Right now I'm stuck on something, and I think I need to give it a bit of a rest. It's worked in the past. Or I could skip back to the other books and work on them. Or I could pick up the camera and take photos.

Here's some of the recent flower photos. I know some of you are a junky needing your fix. Not sure what I'm going to be able to do for you during the winter.