This comes from The Joy of Not Working by Ernie J Zelinski. (He also wrote How to Retire Happy, Wild and Free)
TJONW is a terrific book, and very reassuring. This illustration knocked me for six, however. It seems so obvious, but if it was obvious, there would not be so many people struggling to fill their time usefully.
Like me, you will know people who are lost without their job, the job that leaves them so little time for living happily. And when the job goes, not much else is left.
It's a puzzle that there are people hoping for life eternal who find it tricky to fill a rainy Sunday with useful activity.
Me ? Well, as you probably guessed already, I have never been busier than after retiring. The job always felt like one those huge tyres that slightly mad explorers drag behind them to train for the extremes of exertion, usually in temperatures that would make a penguin shiver. So shedding it was not exactly taxing, and I never regretted its loss, not even for the length of time it takes to eat a small yogurt.
At school, there was a barrow-load of irrelevant reading. But in Dickens I came across a sentence which resonated so much that I wrote ot down when I was 14. He had a smattering of everything, and a knowledge of nothing.
Not only was that written to describe me perfectly, but I recognised that at 14. It was true then, and it is, depressingly, still true to today. I am an inveterate messer-about. And it shows.
What made me think about TJONW today was the Great Virus Lock Down. While it is driving some friends up the pole, we have not got time to even think of shopping, as there is just so much interesting going on.
Sometimes, being an incurable and curious dilletante is a very handy thing to be. And I have my epitaph ready-made ...
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