Is this all there is?

nelliemoser I loved your post and agree with everything you said.

"What is this life if so full of care
We have no time to stand and stare".

Isthis are you a glass half-empty person, or are you perhaps a little depressed? I send you warm greetings and hope you can find some joy in life, contentment and peace.

And another poem"Say not the struggle naught availeth" Worth reading the rest

Isthis: sock darning? Yes, jam making? yes. I can't claim the sheets though!

I'm not sure you would have found those chores too exciting; if so, the option is still there!

I don't wish to be presumptious but I think boredom is the problem. I understand that; as I said, if you've enjoyed your career there is nothing to take it's place.

You were correct about my Granny, she lived in a village, no car, people dropping in all the time - lots of face to face with actual people. And she was content. We have to try and find contentment now and to my mind that comes from accepting the fact that our working lives have finished but that doesn't mean we have.

Oh and did I mention counting blessings?

The quote from Dylan Thomas 'dying of the light' refers to death I think!

All there is is what you choose there to be. I chose lots of of joyous things. Please yourself.

isthisall. I apologise profoundly for my gaffe in not reading your OP. I didn't mean to make you feel bad. Quite the contrary. However, I stand by the rest of my post. You have probably had more influence on more people than you believe. In your OP (yes, I have re-read it), you say that you have been 'an active creator of culture professionally'. I'd love to know what that involved because I'm assuming (forgive me) that you must have been responsible for giving something of value to many people. I realise that your life has gone into a trough as it has for quite a few of us but there are positives that you mentioned in the OP - friends, hobbies, faith. Your life sounds quite rich to me.

Sorry to all the people who've greeted me - I've not been back here for a few days as we had a sudden emergency with my son in law! Fortunately it looks as if 2 or 3 days in hospital & some antibiotics should sort him out & we can all get back to normal

Is Deedaa's post in the right place??

I keep meaning to reply to all the many interesting and helpful points that people have made in this discussion. Thank you.

At least two people have asked me what I used to do as a job. It seems polite to reply.

I've spent all my working life as a Freelance TV Director (Drama). There aren't any staff jobs in Drama, everyone is freelance. I directed lots of soaps and also mid evening dramas on BBC1 and ITV. And arts programmes on ITV and Channel 4. Early on some documentaries and news, plus many corporate films and a few commercials.

I also directed a fair amount of theatre. Then in my 40s, at the same time, I ran a training course in Liverpool for unemployed adults. And in my 50s and 60s, I lectured at Universities (3 of them) and ended up Head of Department of a very large Uni Department.

Then, when I was 59, I was diagnosed with MS. It was invisible from the outside, I just got more tired very quickly. My University employers thought it was totally unacceptable, even a joke, when I asked to be able to lie down somewhere to rest 1-2pm each day. When I went to lecture in China, on the other hand, I was expected to take a rest after lunch!

In the end, after much harassment, I was dismissed. For having Multiple Sclerosis. And Yes, they are able to do that.

So the answer is - directing drama in telly. Then University lecturing.

Not sure why that's useful, but let's see where it goes!

Then your problem isn't that you retired, but you retired before you were ready to. That's where the frustration comes from, I guess. Have you heard of the jockey, Richard Dunwoody? Most jockeys reach a point where they realise how dangerous the job is and then they move on, but he was injured before he was ready to quit and has spent the past few years walking to the south pole and stuff like that. Always pushing himself to the limit. As a jockey he was the ultimate professional and,again pushed himself to the limit. I alway feel that, had he retired when his head was ready to, and not his body, he would have gone into training or media work etc. Don't think your head and your body are in the same place. But, it's very late and if I had any sense I'd go to bed, because I'm probably talking gobledegook. I'm brassed off because I can't walk properly at the moment and it's driving me nuts!

Man walked into the doctor's with a steering wheel down his trousers.

Doctor: "What's that for?"

Man: "Sorry Doctor, it's driving me nuts"

Yup, u'r right. Time for bed. Night night.

Have you thought of writing about your life in TV - I am sure you have plenty of tales to tell.

I think Crimson has it right. It's infuriating when your physical self lets your mental self down. There's a lot to come to terms with, but there must be something out there to keep your exceedly talented head happy without over stressing your body. Writing and art come to mind?

isthis, what a great career. It must have been soul destroying having it snatched from you before you were ready.

That is what MS does - invisibly cuts people off from their lives. Then you get people saying ignorant things like "MS is not usually fatal" - not directly, no, it just selectively destroys random aspects of the patient's life, hitting at the legs, the bladder, the fine muscle control, the sight, sometimes the cognition, the concentration, the personality, a different combination for each person, who does not know what cards they will be dealt and what the future holds. It usually strikes when someone has started to make their way in life, and has a family and a mortgage to worry about, and takes a long time to be completely diagnosed. By then the whole family can be affected.

A nasty disease. But having said that, I know people who have had it for decades and are much the same now as they were at diagnosis - it is that unpredictable.

isthis your former employers behaved appallingly and I think, if you had felt strong enough to pursue it, you would have had a very good case against them. You have my sympathy. I hope you soon find a way of using your skills and experience.

sel 'Do not go gentle into that goodnight/Rage, rage against the dying of the light' is usually taken to be about death but I believe it was about D Thomas's father losing his sight.

Elegran, it is a nasty disease, but I have it much less badly than many. Just some loss of balance, a bit of loss of sight and the tiredness. But the utter unpredictability of the condition is a hassle!

That's interesting, Lilygran. Puts a different slant on it entirely...

I never had any intention of retiring... and then, aged 60, I found myself redundant. I managed to find a year's work on a contract, but they wouldn't extend it because I was 'too near retirement age'.

It's a shock to the system all right, and to one's amour propre - we are conditioned to think of ourselves as what we do, rather than who we are. You'll get over that with a little time.

I found things to do - I maintain a few web sites for different people and for myself, I act as First Contact for an Institute of Advanced Motorists Group, and I am one of thousands transcribing Birth Marriage and Death indexes to provide a free resource for people studying the genealogy of their families. Living alone, the computer is my main contact with the world at large - I'm never short of company!

feetlebaum I did some of that transcribing for freeBMD. Some of my pages were full of infant deaths aged 0 - so many of them in Whitechapel. It could make you weep.

Isthis:

Wow, what a wonderfully interesting career you have had and what awful luck to have it taken away too soon. Unexpectedly too, these things happen to other people don't they? Little wonder that you feel as you do, you're allowed!

Having said that, to go back to your name 'is this all there is?' well, you know the answer to that. Yes it is. But, but, but you can make of it what you will. It's a choice. Can you harness the drive you must have had before to find purpose? Sorry, I do sound preachy and I'm excellent at giving other people advice that I don't follow myself!

I don't know where you live - I'm in Surrey. Around me there are lots of WEA classes in a variety of interesting subjects. I'm ashamed at the gaps, well, gaping holes in my knowledge of a huge variety of things and I enjoy trying to fill the holes a little.

It's just a thought. I think many people would understand your feelings and empathise. It's a sod this ageing thing!

Lilygran: I didn't know that; I'd thought it was about his Father's death and I only know the well quoted bit. Great lines although they would have to be spoken by Richard Burton

Burton was great but I don't think anyone can really beat Thomas reading it himself. I think a creative career is very hard to retire from. I spent a wonderful few years involved with a theatre in Cornwall - my son used to help out sometimes and always said it never felt like going to work. Sadly the whole thing was hijacked by the council as soon as it looked like being successful and the people who'd done all the ground work were quietly dropped. So that was another career change!
The trouble with retirement is that you have ideas in your head about what you'd like to do with it and then you find that either you can't afford it, or poor health means you can't travel and suddenly you've been stuck at home for days and begin to feel that there's no point in bothering with anything.I have 2 friends from my schooldays who are also in a situation where retirement isn't at all what they were intending and I imagine there must many, many more.
Obviously we are all lucky to have a roof over our heads etc. etc. But you can't help hoping for something more.

Although having done some research surfed the web I appear to be a lone voice on Thomas. It's a long, long time since I did A level Eng Lit. - not long after the poem was published, in fact.

I know that 'dying of the light' does suggest that DT's poem 'Do not go gentle into that good night' should about the father losing his sight; however,I think even the first three lines tell us it's about his father's approaching death:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377

I stand corrected, anno.

Isthis, join your local U3A and head up a play reading group.It can be at your own home and at a time to suit you. Borrow the books from the local library. I'd come like a shot!