I’ve written a little about writing in retirement. That was just a few days into my new situation, however, so I hadn’t had much time to establish a habit. Then, afterwards, I wrote more about what retirement was like for me. Again, that was somewhat early on in my “leisure” years—less than two months in to be precise.

As of today I’ve been retired for almost four months. A new normal has finally settled in. Yesterday was somewhat typical. I rose at 6:45 a.m. without an alarm, got up and said my new prayer, “I will awaken the dawn.” Weighed, took my blood sugar, made coffee, and headed to The Dungeon for my work, er, I mean leisure. I check on book sales (so far this year only four); I read two writing related blogs; I check e-mail, weather, and new additions to my 23andMe DNA relatives.

That doesn’t take long, and I move on to a combination of writing and stock trading. I’m quite active in both, working on several writing projects. Every hour from 8 till 12 I spend four or more minutes on the elliptical, trying to keep active while being sedentary. I typically do around 1 to 1.25 miles. Occasionally I start a sequence of rock and roll oldies on YouTube. I don’t do that much, however, for I find it distracting rather than helpful.

I go upstairs for breakfast at 9:00 and for lunch at 1:00 p.m. Then my routine varies. Depending on how my morning went, I will either go back to The Dungeon to continue my morning pursuits, or I go outside to work in the yard, or I go for my afternoon walk. I’ve been doing between 2 and 3 miles as many days as weather and strength permit. Whichever I do, the time is filled.

That brings me up to somewhere around 4:00 p.m. At this stage I’m done typing, done with the stock market, done with exercise. At this point I take a mug of coffee and retreat to the sunroom. This is a fairly large room, filled with chairs and plants. We have a table in it with a lamp. For the winter months we run a space heater and I try to keep the temperature around 60 degrees. For summer, we have a window fan but no air conditioner. It does get hot, but with a chair placed strategically to the fan it’s bearable.

In past years, while working full time, I’ve used the sunroom some, typically on Sunday afternoons when I’m taking rest. Now, I use it almost every day. We have a table out there that came from my mother-in-law’s kitchen, a small, drop-leaf table. It’s a little high for the easy chair, but it works.

I keep a couple of books on that table, which I read only there. One is the letters of Arthur Conan Doyle. I’m going through that very slowly, as in I’ve been at it off and on for over two years. I have a couple of printouts for research purposes that I sometimes pick up and read. One is the Didache, which I have selected as the source document for my next church history novel. Another is one of the source documents for Documenting America: Making The Constitution Edition, my intent being to pull some blog posts from that document.

Much of the time I sit in the easy chair, open the window right behind it, and read. Often I fall asleep. It’s not hard. With a little breeze coming at the back of my head, even if it’s hot in the room, I lay my head back whenever tiredness comes upon me, and I’m asleep almost instantly. Fifteen or thirty minutes later I awake and realize what’s happened. I read some more, sipping coffee. Perhaps I sleep some more.

Around 5:30 to 6:00 p.m., I leave this oasis and go back to the main part of the house to work on supper. I’m not a gourmet by any means, and cook simple things most of the time. Our microwave over went out about a week ago, but getting the two of us out to a store to find a replacement is difficult. So right now, even with leftovers, fixing supper is taking a little extra time.

Once in a while I go back to the sunroom in the evening. I like it after dark. I turn on a lamp on that too-high table, which gives just enough light for comfortable reading in a book. I read something, maybe even on my cell phone. I recently re-awakened my Nook and I may start reading on that in the sunroom.

We have six Christmas cacti out there. Four of them bloomed in March, one still having a few blooms. I enjoy looking up from my reading and seeing them. Other plants in the room don’t bloom, but they make the room more pleasant.

I hope to spend much time in this room in my retirement. Hopefully I’ll get much reading done there, both for research and pleasure.