While not a full time job in any way, organizing the annual Men’s Spring Knitting Retreat happens throughout most of the year.

Playing for Work

Now that I’m retired, it occurs to me that if I could have loved the product of my work as much as I love the men’s knitting retreat, I would have looked forward to doing my work as much as I enjoy organizing the retreat.

It’s an amazingly different perspective.  If I viewed organizing the retreat like I did my work, it would be a list of tasks and chores that I needed to accomplish to have the event be successful.

But fortunately, I see each task as another opportunity to interact with a most amazing group of men.

Processing payments, updating the master spreadsheet, responding to e-mail inquiries, ordering project bags…each of these tasks is one more chance to get to know the guys a little better.  And by the time May rolls around, I am surrounding myself with cherished friends…even if I’m just meeting them for the first time.

• To give you a small window into my retreat organizing world, here’s a few examples of ways I’m acquainting myself with the 2018 group of men:
• finishing up final payments
• updating the master spreadsheet and doing initial room assignments
• discussing potential workshops
• creating the initial agenda for the event
• making “bag buttons” (we give out project bags each year, and the guys provided feedback last year that they wanted some way of labeling the bags so it was easier to know whose bag was whose)

Each year, the tasks for organizing the retreat get easier and easier, but the joy of interacting with this group only gets better and better.

I am truly a fortunate man.

Current Knitting

Progress on the Read Between the Lines Shawl wasn’t anywhere near what I had hoped.

I added on a good four inches to the project (ever-widening inches, I might remind you), but I still have about 20 inches more to knit on this amply-sized shawl.  While it’s a great, mindless project (now that I’ve embedded the rhythm of it into my hands and head), I’d typically start something new around now to switch between projects…but I’m afraid if I do that, this project might stall for the rest of eternity.  So I remain solely committed to this project for now.