I can’t believe it’s two months since I last wrote anything on this blog so I apologise for my rather tardy behaviour. Since my last understated literary masterpiece things have been rather frantic.
Many of you will be aware that I have actively been trying to retire now for the past couple of years but my strategy of picking and choosing projects to work on that won’t interfere with me enjoying myself appears to be getting in the way of me being lazy and idling my days away.
Now my idea of retirement was to do lots of things that I wanted to do rather than the things I had to do to pay the mortgage and the other essentials that living in these days requires.
There is a flaw in that strategy. What happens if what you enjoy doing is what you did as a career! Now there is nothing I love more than delivering a challenging project and without blowing my own trumpet it is something I am quite good at.
That’s when it all gets a little confusing, especially to Lady Ann who since my first attempt at retirement has had a list of chores for me to do a mile long and after two years it’s still half a mile long.
So why would a retired person wish to go back to work, and work as hard as they did when they were working? In my case, it’s all to do with maintaining your lifestyle without the risk of running out of money in your retirement and I also blame the latest in-car handsfree technology.
It seems that most jobs that come in are from people who I have worked with before and they always start with a phone call. Now if I’m in the car I am a good boy and I ignore it and return the call when I have a break on the journey, that is a sort of filtering system that means I can get in some “me” time.
The issue is that if Lady Ann is in the car she answers the calls and volunteers me for all sorts of projects that which although are very interesting and keep my mind going they are also very time-consuming.
So I am currently sat here approaching midnight working on scripts, running orders and production schedules that will ensure that I can still play at being a producer and get paid for the privilege and that is great.
Now if you ask any producer what drives them, most of them will tell you it is not just the money, it’s the challenge of creating something that people will see and hopefully like. So for the next four weeks, I will be stomping around the house with my mobile pressed to my ear trying to negotiate with some fantastically talented people across Manchester so we can collectively produce something incredible.
Once that is complete I can get back to ignoring the dreaded list of chores and maybe Lady Ann and myself can get away for a quiet weekend somewhere before the juggernaut that is Christmas visits Eccles Towers and all the pandemonium that will ensue until the new year!
John D Eccles 