The irksome question I face regularly after retiring from job is: “How do you pass your time?” Folks keep advising me solicitously to “keep yourself busy”. The social myth that “unless you are busy, you are bored”, is deeply entrenched in our psyche. To quell the incessant quizzing, I am penning here a note of elucidation.
I had always nurtured a penchant for ‘writing’ ever since I passed out from university with a postgraduate degree in English literature. Despite paucity of time for writing during the service, I kept the literary flame lit by contributing to the in-house magazine. After retirement, I have devoted myself fully to writing — a vocation I had long kept in abeyance. Through writings which capture and reflect my experiences and perspectives, I am summing up my life.
Retiring at the age of 60 in 2019, I embarked upon an ambitious mission to write 60 stories. I increase the target by one for every year after 60. Now that my age is 64, the revised target is 64. I have already written more than 40 pieces averaging 500 words each — mostly autobiographical in anecdotal template. The backlog will be cleared in a couple of years when the number of published pieces will draw level with my current age. Thereafter, my goal would be one piece per month.
