Retirement and the Gentle Art of Doing Fuck All

There’s a popular idea that retirement needs to be filled. You’re supposed to stay busy. Take up hobbies. Learn a language. Join a club. Keep moving. Keep improving. Keep proving, perhaps, that you’re still useful. I’m not entirely convinced. Ten years ago, if you’d told me I’d be filming the activity around a bird feeder on a small balcony in the Italian Alps, I’d have assumed something had gone slightly wrong. If you’d added that I’d be planning a patio garden around pollinators, and had installed something called a “bee hotel”, I’d have been fairly certain things had gone very wrong. And yet, here we are. The Working YearsWhen you’re working, time is not really yours. Even when you’re not at work, you’re orbiting it. Days are structured around it. Energy is spent on it. Your attention is mostly directed at things that need to be done rather than things that simply exist. You pass things without really seeing them. Birds, for example, are just… birds. Background noise. Movement in…