The problem is that I am retired and Friday is one of the three days of the week that the normies who still work for a living do their errands, like going to get a haircut and buying a bag of oranges at Costco.
In July. I will have been retired for five years. I have stayed busy, to be sure, but I have also adopted the lifestyle pace of the retiree community, in which Mondays through Thursdays during the day belong to us, just as midnight to seven belongs to the night shifters, a community I have interacted with on occasion when I used to work the intake desk at my old job and when I would help my sister on her family’s bread route, going from supermarket to supermarket reloading the shelves with loaves of Pepperidge Farm bread, redundantly secured in its double layer of plastic. I learned that the world is fundamentally different at 4:00 a.m., with its own rules and privileges, including “no cop, no stop” discretion at traffic lights, and easy familiarity with the small community of people doing their jobs at that hour. They all know each other well.
Same for the middle of the workday. Want a haircut? The chair is open, just for you. Want a specialty nut for an orphan bolt in your tool chest? Home Depot has all the time in the world to help you find it. Want to walk the loop at Memorial Park? Parking spots abound, and there is plenty of elbow room for slow walkers like me.
Given that, why would I wait an hour for a haircut on a busy Friday? The bag of oranges and Flonase can wait too.
So this Friday was a slow day for me. I did my puzzles, took a walk with my friend A at Rice, got my feet imaged and measured at the Fleet Feet shoe store (it turns out that I am a natural D width, instead of the E or double E I worried I might be), and when FF did not have the Brooks Glycerin 23s I wanted, I got a pair at Dicks instead. Then home for lunch, a little reading, feed the dogs, and off to a poker game at my friend T’s house. I made $25, which ain’t bupkis.
Really, the only thing worth reporting on today was that I had a long talk with A at the park about a question I have been asking myself lately: Am I a good person?
I am definitely a nice person, and a person that most people enjoy spending time with. I can be funny and supportive and interesting.
But am I a good person?
I have noticed that I spend a lot of time in this blog talking about my dad. I think that is because he was a genuinely good person, deeply influential on his family and friends and community. In retirement, he was active in his church and in service organizations and volunteered with my mother to be court advocates for abused children in the Arkansas CASA program. These are all the kinds of things good people do.
I am not nearly that involved in bettering the world. I help out with volunteer bar activities, and try to do things to make my family, both near and far, happy. I like to cook for others and share my food with my friends.
But am I a good person?
I can be overly competitive, cheap, neglectful of my friends and family, and materialistic. I can be lazy and procrastinating and usually look the other way at roadside solicitors. I can be as suspicious and supercilious and judgmental as a Real Housewife settling scores in a season finale episode.
As I reflect on this, I tell A that I don’t want her to give me an answer to this question, because it is fundamentally unfair to ask a friend to honestly answer it. If she says yes, that’s what a friend would do, so you don’t know if it’s true. And if she says no, that would be hard for her to say and awful for me to hear.
She tells me that it is not for her to say anyway. She says that whether I am a good person or not should initially be defined by my own standards and sense of morality and community. And if those personal standards do not correspond objectively with normal standards of decency and goodness (like a certain president we know), telling that person otherwise is generally going to be fruitless absent that person having a moment of clarity, an epiphany of self-awareness.
So the better question for now is this: Do I think I am a good person?
I do, but I also think I can do better.
That may be my project for 2026. Whatever I am doing now, I will try to do better. More thank you notes and postcards to old friends. More volunteer work (this year, I am going to be doing my part for democracy by volunteering at a polling place, using my bulk and fierce stare to deter Proud Boys and ICE agents from intimidating people exercising their right to vote). More kindness to people who need it. More walking my beloved dogs.
Tomorrow, basketball!
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