Spending time

 In mid-February 2020 I had emergency eye surgery to mend a detached retina. By the time I was cleared to exit my 23 and a half hour per day couch lockdown, the first pandemic lockdown was upon us. By September I was officially retired.

Over a year later, the pandemic is still a thing, and here in Ontario the latest experts have assured us we might, if we behave, if we keep masking and social distancing, and of course get our shots, be allowed a restaurant meal or an in-person hardware store excursion by the end of June.

In the meantime it's been impossible to get anything going that looks like a retirement routine. Every time I get started - Wednesday breakfast with the retired Xerox repair guy, or Friday lunch with the local Green candidate, an occasional round of golf, a game I haven't played in over thirty years - the experts shut us down again.

Which leaves me with a lot of time to spend, which in turn has left me with the question; what's the difference between spending time and wasting time?

The internet is the greatest time-waster ever invented. It starts off every morning luring me in to check the top stories of the day. Of course, for a seasoned news junkie, that means reading multiple news sites to make sure you're covering all the angles on any given story. Up to a point, this can be time well spent. But it can also lead down the rabbit-hole of researching whatever sources are quoted and what their affiliations are. This can take hours, and the only thing that's going to come out of it, at the most, is a pithy blog post that eight people might read. Somewhere along the line, spending time morphs into wasted time.

I've been pushing back. It takes a certain amount of resolve to put down the laptop, and some days I have more than others. Bruno's been keen on getting me out for walks in the woods. There's a particularly rugged 400 acre tract right around the corner that has all kinds of trails and a couple of little lakes. While the perimeter is festooned with warnings that trespassers will be prosecuted, the owner passed away a couple of years back and the heirs are busy contesting the will, so I suspect we'll be enjoying our walks there for a few years yet.

In the last few days, as we've been getting a little more summer weather, Bruno's been letting me know he's not for long walks in the mid-day heat. I've compensated by taking up foraging in the shaded woodlot across the road. We've been cooking up fiddle-heads for a couple weeks, but they're pretty much over now. Today we brought home some wild leeks that will find their way into a delicious soup.

Spending a few hours in the cool of the forest, alone with my thoughts and my dog, and ending the day with a home-cooked meal that includes wild things, brings a level of satisfaction I've never found on the internet.