I am in transition.

I retired ten years ago thinking I would never work again. But I was wrong. I had all these things inside me that I didn’t know where there and they came out one by one: two books, two plays and one screenplay—and they were all successfully monetized.

The last item on my bucket list was “Africa.” I meant “animals,” and I got my fill. That trip ended in January 2013 and that is when I stopped travelling.

In April 2015, I decided that the closing of my second play would be the end of my career as both playwright and performer. Ever since, I have been adapting to a second “retirement” from self-determined projects.

As in childhood, I have endless time, no partner or dependents, no sex life and live alone with pets and a healthy allowance. This second childhood is a banquet of comforts that comes with a surfeit of time.

I should be blissful. Instead, I find the lack of engagement rather challenging. I have only two “dates” in the next twenty days. One is with the exterminators (our strata has a problem with ants) and the other one is with “fish boy,” the delightful young man who helps me manage my aquarium.

I have ruled out volunteering—too regularized.

I have rejected taking a course—they convenience the slowest learners.

Reading and writing is a challenge—too much sitting (I have sciatica now).

Cooking is risky—too many calories.

Cleaning is fabulous—but everything shines and all non-essentials are culled.

Walking is great but it only lasts only three-to-four hours a day and is weather dependent. (I must mention how stunned I was to be walking yesterday in a t-shirt on October 29^th!)

And fuck. My voice is gone again. Today is my second day in a row fighting to speak. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. These “golden” years are brass—and even the brass is a patina.

Photo dump:

I covet these clothes. Oh to be rich and European.