What are you doing?
I heard the interview in Feb. 2019. I made this piece in July 2020, and I am putting it all together in my day-to-day life in 2021. One line in the notice stopped me in my tracks: “Sadly,” it read, “she was diagnosed with cancer on the day she retired; she died ten months later.” My heart stopped, my mind reeled. “How tragic,” I thought. And then, “Thank goodness that is not my story. Phew!” I have left full-time work to pursue productive engagement with my interests, at a self-managed more leisurely pace. I have planned for this and I am privileged to be able to fund it. Some might call it following my passion, but that is a phrase — and a construct — I do not like. Passion is for the bedroom; fulfilment is for the everyday. And that is what I am after: Satisfaction, every day, in the doing of things I enjoy and am good at. No more corner office. No more grand title. Just a solid sense of my evolving self as a writer and community educator — who is also a visual artist, and who...