Sometimes I wonder

 I live in a leisure community. It’s a nudist resort where the majority of residents are retired. That means they shouldn’t be going off to a regular job most days, right? But what do they do?

Got a new phone this week, so had to take the obligatory breakfast photo.

One guy comes into the lodge nearly every day and checks three books out of the library. That’s three books a day! And I still see him riding his bike through the park, coming in to meals on occasion, playing bocce ball. How does he have time to do that?

Another guy is building a house in the community. It’s been under construction for nearly two years and is a really lovely place. He has two dogs he walks several times a day. And to use a phrase my brother-in-law was fond of—may he rest in peace—he’s ‘brown as a coconut.’ Why? He spends hours each day lying by the pool. How does he have time to do that?

The pool is a great place to see the regulars. A massage therapist lies beside the pool for a few hours nearly every day and comes into the lodge to play cards each afternoon. She does a massage or two a day and is reportedly very good at healing techniques. She frequently watches a movie from the movie library. How does she have time to do that?

Oh, yes. The obligatory new phone selfie.

I have my moments of retired bliss as well. I go up to the lodge during a reserved time each afternoon to play cards for a couple of hours. Then I rush right back to my chair in the trailer, where I’m composing three books at the moment. I’m also getting one ready to release in a week and another ready to re-release in two weeks. I spent the morning writing some 3000 words on one story. Then tried to track down a reference I needed. That bit of research led to investigating the cross country records for a sample year I could use to pattern my races after. The PDF files are slow to download, so I am still writing while waiting for the references.

Jackie the Beanstalk will release to the public Sunday August 1, 2021!

After the card game, I continue on my research and writing, re-reading earlier chapters that I’ve written to make sure continuity is consistent. I switch over to a second story I’m working on to get a thousand words written on that. I start working on the layout for my re-release and spend a solid four hours just applying the right style codes to the source material of the 85-chapter book. And in the midst of all that, I managed to fix breakfast and dinner (but not get the dishes washed), make and drink two pots of coffee, and search for photos I can use for cover art on the next book. How could I possibly lie out in the sun doing nothing???

I wonder that the majority of the people I meet here have no on-going passion that keeps them occupied—unless lying in the sun counts as an on-going passion, or simply reading book after book is an on-going passion. Not to mention the number of TV shows I hear them talking about having watched, the garden they are growing, the dog they are training.

I know I neglect many things that others consider important. My trailer only gets cleaned monthly (if it’s lucky). My dishes get washed when I need one to eat off of. My laundry gets done when I have to go to town or a textile location and haven’t got any clean underwear. It gets put away eventually.

So far, Team Manager: SWISH! is my best selling novel of all time! Amazing!

If I am idle, I’m asleep. I don’t have the patience to simply lie in the sun. A few minutes of enforced inactivity and I can’t wait to get back to the story I’m writing. When I insist on just sitting and watching a movie in the evening, there’s a strong chance that I’ll quit in the middle of it so I can write something I just thought of. People ask me where I get the ideas for my books as if they don’t have a non-stop flow of people yammering in their heads and demanding to have their stories told! That’s normal, right?

I just need to figure out how people have time to do all this ‘relaxing’ stuff.