March 8,2011

Sarah J. was here overnight, on her way to Korea (she is a social worker, , retired from years of working for Kaiser Permanente, now employed by the Army for part-time assignments at various  US bases throughout the world).  I live quite near the San Francisco airport, and many friends thus visit me - sometimes overnight, on  arriving,  or before departing from the San Francisco airport.  This maintains contacts for me with people whom I would not see otherwise for months or years).
 
So we continued with a discussion we had in January, shortly after she had left Kaiser and before she knew of the present assignment.  At the time I had found her surprisingly irritable and tense, and had commented about it.   She now referred to this and told how at the time she was "dealing with retirement blues" (she is in her seventies, much younger than me, but obviously in the "senior" category). Her "blues" have disappeared now that she is on this new assignment,  but she anticipates having a rough time again in May when she returns and the assignment is completed, with no information as to whether she may have another assignment. 

We compared notes, for  I have been having similar "retirement blues" now that I have definitely retired from doing workshops in Europe. .........- Oh, I just realised!   I haven't yet told you yet  why I started this blog.!  It's precisely to deal with the "retirement blues" I was having.  I suppose I am somewhat "escapist":  I see this blog as becoming a "solution" for me and a way to escape retirement blues - whereas Sarah believes in facing  such pain in the "now" as a way to gowing through "to a higher level of evolution" (??????)
The truth is that this approach is beyond me .

So back to why I've started this blog - or, rather, even further back, to the fact that ever since l981 until July of this year, when I firmly announced, at the European Transactional Analysis conference in Prague ( where I was given the 2010 gold medal for "Lifetime Achievement",) that I would no longer be coming to Europe to conduct workshops because such continuous travel has become too demanding physically , I have been dealing with a sense of deprivation - nothing to look forward to, just face all the mess in my files and in my study . Yes, for years I have  been talking about how I must find the time to make some order in my files, in my books (which are on my bookshelves still the way the movers placed them , eleven years ago when I moved, to  to the retirement center I live in ) in my closets, in my drawers - get my living room sofa and chairs re-upholstered or buy new furniture, etc. etc.   At the present time I cannot find any copies of articles I have written, my voluminous files are meaningless; they are also where the movers put them.  And I feel overwhelmed by all my  unanswered correspondence, some of it quite stimulating , if only I could find the references I'd like to call on for a proper reply.
There are stacks of papers on the bookshelves in the closet of my study.  Before a trip I would delve into a couple of stacks and find a few  copies of papers that could be useful for one workshop or another ahead - but these have gotten messed up too as trips accumulated:, by now "throw away" material is combined with "essential" material that I needed for my trips - and although for a long time at least  I kept material separated by language (German, French Italian and English) even this distinction is no longer reliable, so by now although I hired a young woman to help me sort  out material to discard, I had to do it with her (and find the time for it) because because over  time  had not separated languages  sufficiently.

So I was getting more and more depressed, with a sense of hopelessness, and "venting" (complaining) to my daughter, until one day she said:-  On the one hand you complain about missing the workshops, they stimulated you and gave you the sense of feeling alive, whereas now you feel depressed.  On the other hand you complain about feeling overwhelmed for lack of time to do all you set out to do each day.  Which is it?
Not enough to do or too much to do?
"It's both", I answered .  And suddenly - propelled by the  mysterious inner source we sometimes call the Unconscious  (to which others give many many other names) came the Inspiration - as I happened to read a simple article about blogs. I knew that yes,  a blog is what I need, although it may sound strange to think of a blog fulfilling for me the function of the workshops I was conducting in Europe!.

Which means now that I need tell you more about what I hope to achieve with this blog - doing so may  correspond to how I worked with participants of my workshops when we established  a "contract" with each about what she or he they wanted to gain from the workshop they were in.

But now I am sleepy......will have to continue later or another day.