One week into this new life.

I retired one week ago.
It feels like I took off work to clean house for my birthday dinner.
I've taken off a week to clean house before---so not too unusual.

It rained much of the week, which is pretty odd for August in Oklahoma.
I've also put up a lot of things I should have put up in the first place and polished a lot of stuff I hadn't polished in months (years? ever?).  I still had a deadline--1 week--to finish cleaning.

I'm guessing that new deadlines will be coming my way--IRS comes to mind.  I just got my last paycheck.  In the future, I'll get one check a month that is less than half of one work check.

 I figured out by Wednesday that I needed to track a budget.  My bills are mostly gone and I'm not a shopper, but I've never been a saver either.  I could get myself in trouble if I don't pay attention.

Wednesday Night I had my first work nightmare in a month.  I awoke anxious, then remembered I didn't have to work as a nurse anymore.  Amazingly, while nurses see their job as very important and high-stress, most people that have not worked healthcare think nurses have an overpaid and easy job.  I spent my last 10 years working on the education and quality improvement side of healthcare, and the people that go that route hate to admit it, but are also trying to find a place to get away from the stresses of providing healthcare without dumping the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.  Work nightmares are not rare among nurses.  It's a frustrating job, where higher's up frequently think challenging nurses is the same as trying to get them to do 18 hours work in 12 hours while not skipping anything or allowing anything unsafe to occur.  Most of those higher's up consider the nursing care and ancillary care to be "An unfortunately high business expense" in the world of healthcare.  Doctors are particularly prone to this attitude, considering that people go to the hospital to see the doctor--only.  My retort to this is to ask, "how much time did the Doctor spend with the patient, versus the time the patient spent with nurses and therapists and technicians.  If we only go to the hospital for Doctors, then we don't need hospitals, only Doctor's offices, 15 minutes is 15 minutes.

As the week goes on, the weird dreams are coming nightly.  Perhaps my subconscious mind is clearing out the cobwebs.  Retiring is major stressor on most of those life-stress monitoring things.  One of those that sound very positive but increase stress similarly to losing a loved one or moving a child to college.  Change is a stressor, fear of change, insecurity, everything is a stressor.

I made it through the clean-up, my son did the windows around the dining room just before the birthday party--it looked much better.  We all ate too much; talked about nothing with only a couple of times that we tried to wander into past exploits no one wants to be reminded of or politics.

Not bad.

So, this week, with no more deadlines on the horizon, I will start my days with some exercise and fun.  I do have a goal, though---get the craft room/art room navigable again.

I want to paint.  (I'm thinking that will stop thoses weird dreams!)