SUNDAY WILL NEVER BE THE SAME

Sunday sailing on Lake Michigan with Chicago’s skyline as backdrop. (Photo credit: The Weekly Opine)

Everyone should experience this.

Way back in the 1960s, sunshine pop band Spanky & Our Gang wrote a song about lost love. For the forlorn lead singer, Sunday was absent the simple romantic occasions she’d become accustomed to, such as walking through the park holding hands. Titled “Sunday Will Never Be the Same,” the song was a rumination about the aftermath of love that slipped away.

Now that I am retired, having given up the job search last fall, my Sundays have not been the same, either. Spanky & Our Gang’s lyrics included “Sunday’s just another day.” From a former working man’s perspective that is true. Anyone who retires finds the days blending together, weekdays hardly distinguishable from weekend days.

A career that began upon graduating from Indiana University in 1980 unofficially ended nearly three years ago, in the fall of 2016. After a two-year period remaining on the job hunt, in 2017 and 2018, I officially ‘called it a day’ last fall, content never to return to corporate life.

Weekly scouring the business page jobs section of the Sunday Chicago Tribune and checking the not-really-for-Baby-Boomers Linkedin site did not deliver anything that matched my specific skill-set and resume profile.

What I started to notice during the initial stages of semi-retirement, has become more evident during the past nine months of official retirement. That is, how Sundays feel, most notably Sunday evenings. At the risk of alienating Spanky & Our Gang fans, instead of singing, “I remember Sunday mornings…” my retirement verse opens with, “I remember Sunday evenings…”

Back when I was fully employed, in a fun but pressure-cooker job, Sunday evening was a time of work-related ‘butterflies.’ The cloud of work responsibility appeared around 5 o’clock and intensified as the evening wore on. No matter what the distraction was, be it “60 Minutes” or “Sunday Night Football,” I could not shake the feeling that, come Monday morning, the party was over (which it was).

Go ahead if you want to. Find the music instrument you played in high school and blast away! (Photo credit: The Weekly Opine)

Do what you want to do

Now? Sunday evenings are glorious! To quote another 1960s song, from the great Mamas and the Pappas, Sunday evenings, and any other days or evenings, amount to “You gotta go where you want to go, do what you want to do.”

What to do? I was bored a while ago, so I drove to a music store and purchased a used trombone, which is the instrument I played in high school band. What comes out of the trombone is not recognizable, but it is fun to wail away while moving the slide up and down as if I am James Pankow or Trombone Shorty.

A few weeks ago, I attended a Sunday night philanthropy event in Chicago, unencumbered by sweating about Monday meetings, emails, conference calls and presentations. Stick around at the event longer than intended, chatting up former workmates? Yes, indeed! Have a second glass of vino? Sure, why not! Take the slow route home, rolling through tranquil neighborhoods? Delightful.

This past Sunday, I did some weeding and planting with the garden group I belong to, then headed to Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood for lunch at an excellent Mexican restaurant called Mas Alla Del Sol. Besides losing 15 degrees of warmth due to the cooler-by-the-lake factor, it was a relaxing, sumptuous dining experience. The best chicken enchiladas I’ve ever eaten. Unhurried.

After returning home, I shuffled around, finally settling on my front porch with the Sunday Chicago Tribune. Like many others, I do use apps on my mobile device to glean information. And I recognize the time is coming, hopefully not until the distant future, when newspapers will not exist. But I still prefer the tactile experience of going through the paper, section by section. Plus, if I drop the paper on the porch it won’t break. If my cell phone drops to the concrete porch, it might end up like Humpty Dumpty.

After reading the newspaper, I lounged around talking on the phone with a friend from Indy for nearly two hours. No rush, no work anxiety, just a pleasant, late-Sunday afternoon watching the raindrops from under the cover of my porch overhang. Heavenly! Finished off a warm, early-June evening with a couple glasses of wine, serenaded by birds who gave an encore-worthy performance.

Retirement fun on Sundays; cruising South Beach, leisurely watching the Masters and being among the throng at the Indy 500 (Photo credit: The Weekly Opine and CBS Sports screenshot)

Any old time

Sticking with the music theme, I’m free to do what I want, any old time. Who sang that song? Google says it was The Soup Dragons, recorded in 1990.

Traveling is definitely a different experience now.

My first trip as a fully retired soul occurred last February, when I took a lovely train trip to Miami Beach and back. Different from vacation trips when corporately employed, there were no rushed emails to check. No jumping every time the phone vibrated. No hurriedly scheduled conference calls that I was expected to join. I walked to the Atlantic Ocean from my friend’s luxurious condo, waded knee-deep into the water, and then sat in the sand in a state of euphoria. Fourteen hundred miles from snowy Chicago and light years from corporate intrusion.

The Miami Beach trip was blissful, unbothered by the nuisances that uptight bosses sometimes create, which tend to ruin your relaxation plan.

A few weeks ago, my “Back home again in Indiana” trip to Indianapolis, Greencastle and Bloomington was totally my own, with zero interruptions by projects that used to intrude upon my hard-earned vacation time.

Steak dinner in Indy with my aunt and uncle, at Harry & Izzy’s, kicked off a marvelous five days. Dinner with relatives in the small town of Greencastle the following evening was mellow and fun. Hanging out with high school friends at the beautiful Oliver Winery in B-town on Friday, then cooking out later that night, was the epitome of friendship and relaxation. Golf on Saturday (I sucked) and the Indy 500 Sunday completed a stretch of uninterrupted chilling that was impossible to achieve when I was a corporate man.

(For the record, I am not anti-corporate and certainly not dogging my former employers. Accompanying the fast-paced pressure was a wholeheartedly fun job, and the pay was not bad, either)

I have two of the three necessities to mimic Clint but need a dog. (Photo credit: The Weekly Opine)

Neighborhood watchman, aka Eastwood

Until retiring, I had no idea the amount of commotion that goes on in my neighborhood. During summer it is particularly noticeable. Delivery trucks, postal trucks, seemingly never-ending landscaping services (those damned leaf blowers are a menace), handymen, light construction workers.

Thus, I anointed myself the unofficial neighborhood watchman. Maybe I should get a dog? I already have a cooler and a black 1976 Ford Torino. I envision parking the Torino on the driveway, filling the cooler with beer and sitting on my porch with the dog, shooing neighborhood kids off my lawn, like Clint Eastwood did in the movie “Gran Torino.”

In the meantime, I do not sleep in, rising each morning around 6:30 a.m. without the aid of an alarm clock. Weekdays, no TV until evenings, except for the noon news at lunchtime. (I do allow mid-afternoon TV on Fridays to watch “Wagon Train” or golf tournaments). Tuesday and Wednesday are reserved for writing my blog. Running errands while sipping coffee from a thermos, even during winter, is a pleasure.

As you can probably tell, I do like a sense of order and keeping things tidy. So, if you are invited to stop by for a cold one, please do not walk across my yard to the front door. Use the paved walkway. And don’t touch the car.

Yep, makin’ Clint proud!