Do I need more to do in 2026? Well, sometime over the next twelve months I have to seriously decide whether I should continue working or retire. This should be easy, right? Nope.
I have already made some decisions, such as what I intend to do after I retire (work as a volunteer transcribing hand-written documents for The National Archives) and if I will ever self-publish for profit under my old bylines (absolutely not. When I stop working for money, I stop working.) These are non-negotiable decisions that I made for my general health, happiness and avoidance of all the unpleasantness associated with self-publishing as well as what I left behind when I stopped writing for the big NY publishers.
While I am getting older by the day, so is my guy, who is twelve years older than me. He will soon be in his eighties and is starting to have some genuine issues with his cognitive and physical capabilities. Memory problems and falls are our two big problems at the moment (I'm also having some problems with multi-tasking. In my case, it's not a good idea anymore to do more than one thing at a time.) I must also prepare for the day when I become his care giver as well as his life partner, and also what happens if he predeceases me or I predecease him. I refuse to leave these decisions to anyone else. No one will care the way we do about ourselves and our fate. It's just hard to know when things are going to get tougher.
If I have to give up writing professionally to deal with our lives at this stage of the game -- which I acknowledge will not be easy -- I will. I will keep writing, of course, but not for profit. I'm not sure if I will even make that available to anyone, or continue to blog. For the first time in my life I have the option not to hand over my writing to other people, and after almost forty years of doing that the idea of keeping it all for myself is very, very appealing.
Isolation has always been something I've lived with, so I'm not daunted by the notion of going it alone after I retire, and/or if my guy predeceases me. Nor do I think it will be bad for me. Shy people often dream of a life where they don't have to interact with others, but I've always forced myself to. I would do a lot of things differently if I had another go, but I've met a few wonderful friends, so there's that.
Fortunately I'm not under a tight time limit to make these decisions. I've given myself a year, which is plenty of time to think about my options. Maybe Next April 5th I'll announce what's next for me. :)
Image credit: Image by Ylanite Koppens from Pixabay
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