Getting Back to the Dreams 8

Tales of an Overachieving Retiree
(Article 2)

A series of articles about the challenges of bringing overachievement into retirement and finding pleasure in the process

By Peter
Primary English Teacher / Curriculum Advisor
Retired 2009

In my first article, I described myself as a budding artist and mentioned the fact that I had taken a few short courses in video and audio recording. It was all part of The Plan, a two-year plan.  Three years into retirement, after training to become a therapist, I realized that I had a real and urgent need to create. The need wasn’t new. It’s been there for years. I need to express things, to conceive, to produce, to capture beauty and put it into some form, to touch emotions and express them.  I realized that I needed to get back to my dreams. When the plan was near completion, I discovered that there was one dream that I had let go, because I wasn’t at ease with the requirements.

Shuffling Off a Robe

I believe part of the imbalance of my days as a student and in my professional life grew from that part of me that was overwhelmed by my world, the social and political turmoil over several decades. Inside of me dwelled the rage of the age.  I was disturbed by the political situation in the 50’s: the Cold War, my mother’s fear of communism, the air raid sirens on CBC broadcasts preparing us for nuclear threats. Then there were the 60’s: revolts on campuses – Sir George Williams and Kent State – JFK’s assassination, many human losses in Vietnam and the Middle East, the US civil rights movement, hippies, and freedom to live otherwise.  I was troubled by the injustice and the suffering, so in the late sixties I decided that the best route was to become a priest. That way at least I would be “saved”… and loved, because I would have to become a saint, almost.  In addition, and perhaps more importantly, I would be contributing by helping people. Nonetheless, after two years as a Jesuit novice, I realized that it was not my road.  Gone not because I didn’t want to contribute but because I was too at odds with the doctrine and discrepancies to be able to wear the robe. One dream gone, replaced by teaching.

I recognized forty years later I had a chance, as a therapist, to get back to the pews, in touch with part of the lost dream – having a direct impact on people by accompanying them in their difficulties.  So I put it back into my plan, part-time therapist, but only one day per week for the first year.

Origins of the Bud

I’m sitting in my budding artist / therapist office studio wondering why I haven’t pulled out a canvas since my first article.  I have sat in the therapist’s chair often, now up to three days a week.  But the budding artist is still budding.

I realized when I worked on my plan that my artistic dreams go way back and that I needed to upgrade that creative cat in me. In the mid-60s as a teenager I was enthralled by photography and recording sound. I bought my first camera in Penatanguishene at the Martyrs’ Shrine for about fourteen dollars with my own money. God knows how I could gather that much cash from a twenty-five cent allowance.  It had a pinhole light leak that left a light streak across my masterpieces.  But that didn’t matter; I was a photographer. Next I upgraded my career to that of spy. I bought a small 3 ½ inch reel-to-reel portable recorder and lurked in shadows around my brothers and sisters, before upgrading to a 5 inch model. Later, as a young university student, I bought a Pentax SLR camera, eventually a zoom, and soon elevated a notch up to black and white darkroom equipment. I still have a magnificent collection of hand-developed negatives and contact sheets from my first year after university, when I worked in Strasburg and travelled through Europe.  They are part of my dream – to scan the negatives and travel nostalgically back through pictures, some of which I have only seen through a magnifying glass.

In 1984, ten years into my teaching career, I went to upgrade myself, in didactics, but took a left turn into educational technology and discovered personal computers. I came to see them as a wonderful teaching subterfuge that would pull Carl Rogers’ student-centred learning out of the Theory of Education course and back into the classroom. Why? Because we had kids in front of computers with their backs turned to the teacher. Those studies led me to my curricular advisor’s job where I trained teachers to use software and digital photo and video cameras in projects with their students. I showed them new teaching practices that put the kids in the driver’s seat of their own learning process.  Travel lust led me to Tunisia, where I gave two training sessions on integrating technology with cooperative learning methods.

One of the side benefits of my trip to the desert was a little extra money, so I upgraded my computer equipment and bought a graphics tablet. All too soon, I discovered that I didn’t know how to draw.  So I squeezed a weekly art course into my already well furnished schedule.  The end result was that I actually learned to paint, with both hands, and to recognize the fact that I have a good eye for composition, not the drawing talent of a graphic artist but the respectful talent of an artist able to put on the canvas my perceptions.  I actually provoke comments of surprise from those who look at my paintings when they discover who did them.  I am also moved to hear them name some of the emotions that I wanted to display.

As a fresh retiree, back in 2009, we moved and many things changed in my life, including my studies.  Instead of nurturing the artist in me, I put that on hold.  But I had my dreams … and a plan which involved getting back to the kid with the recorder and the adult painter with ideas and talent.  The plan was to purchase production quality video equipment, microphones and a portable field mixer and digital recorder.  It included renovating the back shed into a studio for the polymorphic artist that I want to be.  It also involved going to school to ‘upgrade’ my technical knowledge of the equipment and accepting help from others who use it.  I came to appreciate that I didn’t know how to draw, had stubby fingers and little confidence in myself. I then began to understand that there are entire professions built around the components in my equipment cupboard: camera operator, audio recordist, boom operator, director, producer, lighting supervisor, digital photographer, just to name a few. There also are the artistic factors that go into the creative process of producing the documents that I want to work on. It is not part of my dream to become all that, but I want to be at ease and know what I’m doing.

Update

I concede that the plan has slipped into year 3 ½. But I am proud to say the equipment has been purchased, slowly, piece by piece. I enjoyed that, learning about what I should buy, talking to the people that sell it, and taking a few courses. The studio is in place. I enjoyed helping build it and especially designing the work and storage area. The result is an oversized cupboard with shelving, a desk area for drawing, cutting or working with clay or styrofoam, as well as an enclosed painting surface – all with adequate lighting.  The enclosure has doors that shelter my artistic endeavours from the view of therapy clients.  I love the office/studio with its large windows looking out on to the lawn and the woods … and the birds.

From the Robe to the Rub

Wherein lies the rub?  I’m more in the /office than the /studio, more for my clients and the administration duties linked to my volunteer work.  The artist in me is still largely behind closed doors.  That, at times, is frustrating. It wouldn’t be too bad if I could wait a little.  The project time run-over, to get to where I am, wouldn’t bother me normally.  I have learned to be indulgent towards that part of me where I get sidelined.  But there’s the rub.  I have been putting things on hold for quite a while, yet I’m 66. There’s an end to the side track somewhere, and now it’s sooner rather than later.  That is why I have to stop.  Stop at the speed of light, as Dr. David Kundtz says in his book Stopping: How to Be Still When You Have to Keep Going.  I intend to use this time to sit with myself and undo the overdoing.  Once still, I can determine where I want to go and, more importantly, how I want to get there.