This concept didn't come to me easily, as obvious as it seems. It's hard to get past the idea that your week isn't divided in parts anymore: the work part, and the much shorter weekend part. Every day is the same now: wide open. My new mantra is "Any day, any time."
We were working out a plan to get together with friends, and it suddenly dawned on me. The calendar is wide open now, still divisible, but in a different way. Just save Saturday and Sunday for friends who haven't retired, and the weekdays for those who have. It opens up the entire week to see friends, an extremely free feeling!
Sedum 'Autumn Joy,' on a downtown street
Showing posts with label Retirement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Retirement. Show all posts
6.20.2012
Retirement tips from a novice | Part 6
This one should really be a pre-retirement tip.
Long before you retire, start thinking about how you want to spend your days after retirement. Not just the mental list, the one where you'd dream about retirement and the things you'd finally have time to do. Make a real list, and write it down.
I always had a "mental list," with the usual stuff on it: travel, spend more time with family, finally do those projects I never had time for. I suspect most people have these three things on their retirement list.
But when I started to write things down, an interesting thing happened: my list snowballed as I expected it would, but the more I wrote down, the more I realized just how possible it would be to achieve my goals once I had control of my time. It seems obvious, but I just didn't see it until I wrote down every possibility.
And that, my friends, made all the difference in my own attitude about retiring and when to take the plunge. The more I added to my list, the more anxious I was to get started.
Long before you retire, start thinking about how you want to spend your days after retirement. Not just the mental list, the one where you'd dream about retirement and the things you'd finally have time to do. Make a real list, and write it down.
I always had a "mental list," with the usual stuff on it: travel, spend more time with family, finally do those projects I never had time for. I suspect most people have these three things on their retirement list.
But when I started to write things down, an interesting thing happened: my list snowballed as I expected it would, but the more I wrote down, the more I realized just how possible it would be to achieve my goals once I had control of my time. It seems obvious, but I just didn't see it until I wrote down every possibility.
And that, my friends, made all the difference in my own attitude about retiring and when to take the plunge. The more I added to my list, the more anxious I was to get started.
6.15.2012
Retirement tips from a novice | Part 5
Learn to embrace the "one thing." Don't try and do it all at once... you don't have to. Multi-tasking was for your old life, the one where you had way too much to do with not enough resources and no chance of succeeding.
Leave that life behind in your too-small office cubicle, and change your perspective. No more cramming all the weeks' chores into a couple of days. Try doing one thing a day instead, and let the lack of urgency help you learn to relax. (But if your idea of freedom is running around the county doing errands and visiting friends, shopping and sightseeing, by all means go for it!)
For the first month of retirement, I was content to carry on with my usual tasks each day, but also gave myself time to read, to answer e-mail, to browse through the stacks at the library, and I finally got my shopping done at Ikea. If the sun was out, I worked in the yard. If it was raining, I'd inventory the wine cellar or do some sewing, or maybe just catch up with my journal and write for my blog.
Being content with one thing worked great for me... give it a try.
Leave that life behind in your too-small office cubicle, and change your perspective. No more cramming all the weeks' chores into a couple of days. Try doing one thing a day instead, and let the lack of urgency help you learn to relax. (But if your idea of freedom is running around the county doing errands and visiting friends, shopping and sightseeing, by all means go for it!)
For the first month of retirement, I was content to carry on with my usual tasks each day, but also gave myself time to read, to answer e-mail, to browse through the stacks at the library, and I finally got my shopping done at Ikea. If the sun was out, I worked in the yard. If it was raining, I'd inventory the wine cellar or do some sewing, or maybe just catch up with my journal and write for my blog.
Being content with one thing worked great for me... give it a try.
5.31.2012
Retirement tips from a novice | Part 4
While you're practicing your deep breathing and smiling exercises (see Part 1), take time to get to know your home from a new perspective: being there every day, for as many hours as you want. If anything made me smile on that first day at home, it was this: taking as much time as I wanted to dawdle over breakfast, being able to load the dishwasher instead of piling dishes in the sink and rushing off to work. Scratch that: it was being able to eat breakfast at home, instead of at my desk at 5:30 in the morning. Simple as it sounds, I loved it.
At my retirement celebration, I joked with co-workers that the first thing on my To Do list was cleaning out closets. Everyone laughed, but it was true. I knew that rather than leaving on a trip, I wanted to spend time decompressing and getting my bearings with a new focal point: my home (rather than my job). Maybe it's a girl thing, the nest-building syndrome or something. I just know that I enjoyed puttering around the house, cleaning out closets, and straightening books on shelves, dusting where no dust cloth had been, and vacuuming from basement to attic.
I also got reacquainted with every inch of my gardens, from patio borders to orchards, perennial gardens to container plantings, herb garden to cutting garden. Instead of just quickly pulling weeds so I could make it through all the gardens in limited time, I took time all the time I needed to pull weeds, then dig deep to sift out rocks and roots, and enrich the soil for new plants.
My advice: take time to smell the coffee and the flowers. And enjoy every minute of it.
At my retirement celebration, I joked with co-workers that the first thing on my To Do list was cleaning out closets. Everyone laughed, but it was true. I knew that rather than leaving on a trip, I wanted to spend time decompressing and getting my bearings with a new focal point: my home (rather than my job). Maybe it's a girl thing, the nest-building syndrome or something. I just know that I enjoyed puttering around the house, cleaning out closets, and straightening books on shelves, dusting where no dust cloth had been, and vacuuming from basement to attic.
I also got reacquainted with every inch of my gardens, from patio borders to orchards, perennial gardens to container plantings, herb garden to cutting garden. Instead of just quickly pulling weeds so I could make it through all the gardens in limited time, I took time all the time I needed to pull weeds, then dig deep to sift out rocks and roots, and enrich the soil for new plants.
My advice: take time to smell the coffee and the flowers. And enjoy every minute of it.
5.27.2012
Retirement: Comparing notes with friends
We spent the day with friends who are retired and not yet retired. Jim is the only one still on the clock, but he's sure happy for Ruth... he says that she wakes up each morning with a smile on her face, and I think that's really sweet. The past 6 months or so we've talked about our retirement plans, and today was the first time we've talked about how three of us are adapting to retirement and what was best (so far) about our new-found lives.
It's been interesting, adjusting to the novelty of doing what I want with my hours and days. And trying to figure out why I don't miss my career. I spent 30+ years earning my living as a writer and editor. Before falling in love with technical writing and editing, I wrote articles for magazines and newspapers. I never expected to walk away and not miss it. But I don't. I can't exactly say this was the best thing to come from retirement. For me, it's that there's no more stress about any task I might choose to work on. No deadlines or specific timeframe I have to meet. There's something very relaxed about this, that if I don't finish something up today, I have tomorrow.
Ruth retired the end of January, and loves her new life... no surprise there. She spent a lot of time thinking about what she wanted her new life to look like, and how she'd spend her days. Like me, she wasn't worried about retiring and being bored. But her favorite thing so far was something she didn't even consider: no more Sunday afternoon depression, thinking about and getting ready for Monday morning. Because her job in Everett meant getting up at 3:00 in the morning, she rarely could do anything social on Sundays. That's all changed, the stress is gone, and she's loving it. Sunday rolls around and Jim gets ready for Monday, and Ruth can keep on gardening or reading cookbooks or whatever she's doing, with no stress about the work week, because Poof! it's long gone, never to return.
It's been interesting, adjusting to the novelty of doing what I want with my hours and days. And trying to figure out why I don't miss my career. I spent 30+ years earning my living as a writer and editor. Before falling in love with technical writing and editing, I wrote articles for magazines and newspapers. I never expected to walk away and not miss it. But I don't. I can't exactly say this was the best thing to come from retirement. For me, it's that there's no more stress about any task I might choose to work on. No deadlines or specific timeframe I have to meet. There's something very relaxed about this, that if I don't finish something up today, I have tomorrow.
Ruth retired the end of January, and loves her new life... no surprise there. She spent a lot of time thinking about what she wanted her new life to look like, and how she'd spend her days. Like me, she wasn't worried about retiring and being bored. But her favorite thing so far was something she didn't even consider: no more Sunday afternoon depression, thinking about and getting ready for Monday morning. Because her job in Everett meant getting up at 3:00 in the morning, she rarely could do anything social on Sundays. That's all changed, the stress is gone, and she's loving it. Sunday rolls around and Jim gets ready for Monday, and Ruth can keep on gardening or reading cookbooks or whatever she's doing, with no stress about the work week, because Poof! it's long gone, never to return.
5.22.2012
Retirement tips from a novice | Part 3
Keep in touch. You may have people who'll want to keep track of you, and you may have friends you were in contact with using your work e-mail. Once you're gone, will people know how to get in touch with you?
I did an informal survey in the month after I announced my retirement, and found a common theme. A lot of people said that they never knew where their retired friends and colleagues were. Once you no longer have a fixed schedule, no one knows where (or more importantly, when) they can find you. If you want people to reach you, be sure to share your new e-mail address.
I did an informal survey in the month after I announced my retirement, and found a common theme. A lot of people said that they never knew where their retired friends and colleagues were. Once you no longer have a fixed schedule, no one knows where (or more importantly, when) they can find you. If you want people to reach you, be sure to share your new e-mail address.
5.14.2012
The first month of freedom
Can the act of smiling wake you up in the morning? 'Cause each day since I retired I swear that when I opened my eyes, there was already a smile on my face! Some days I'd wriggle back under the covers and grin for a while before finally rolling out of bed. I'd pull on sweats and a t-shirt, and wander out to the kitchen to start the coffee. While it brewed, I'd open up all the blinds in the house, open the kitchen windows, and listen to the birds chirping in the camellia bush just outside. If the day was warm, I'd walk barefoot out on the porch and survey my private gardens, see what plants had pushed their way to the surface, and which rhododendron had started to bloom. Some mornings I'd see our neighborhood mule deer grazing in the old orchard, or walking down our driveway to the private road. I'd fill the bird feeders, then walk back inside in time for the first cup of coffee out of the pot.
Each day, Dave would call with the same question: "Are you bored yet?" And my answer was always the same: "No, but I'll keep you posted."
Each day, Dave would call with the same question: "Are you bored yet?" And my answer was always the same: "No, but I'll keep you posted."
5.10.2012
Retirement tips from a novice | Part 1
I'm a complete novice at retirement. After all, it's my first crack at it. It's been fun so far, and I've learned a lot.
Since writing things down is second nature to me after keeping a journal for four decades, it was only natural that I'd take notes on this new stage of my life.
My first bit of advice is to relax. Chill. Take deep breaths and smile. Smile a lot... you know, the kind of smile where your teeth show. Walk through the office and smile big. And don't wait until the first day of retirement to start practicing this. The more you relax in your final months of working for a living, the easier it is to let go of the job, and be OK about the tasks that won't get done (not by you, anyway). This mellow state was a lot of the reason why, when I woke up on my first day of freedom, I didn't feel any remorse at leaving my job, and no stress over how they'd get on without me. I woke up with a smile, thinking only about what I'd do first: work in the garden, or finish my book!
Since writing things down is second nature to me after keeping a journal for four decades, it was only natural that I'd take notes on this new stage of my life.
My first bit of advice is to relax. Chill. Take deep breaths and smile. Smile a lot... you know, the kind of smile where your teeth show. Walk through the office and smile big. And don't wait until the first day of retirement to start practicing this. The more you relax in your final months of working for a living, the easier it is to let go of the job, and be OK about the tasks that won't get done (not by you, anyway). This mellow state was a lot of the reason why, when I woke up on my first day of freedom, I didn't feel any remorse at leaving my job, and no stress over how they'd get on without me. I woke up with a smile, thinking only about what I'd do first: work in the garden, or finish my book!
5.01.2012
A new life
A lot has happened in my life in the past month... besides not keeping up with my blog! Much more to come soon, because I have all the time in the world: I'm retired!! May 1 is the start of a new adventure, and I can't wait to get started down that path.
1.25.2011
Cemetery walkers
Through a series of geocaches, I've learned a bit about cemetery walkers. These are folks who have an interest in the old historic cemeteries, and volunteer their time to record information from headstones and post it to an online website. It's something I'd like to look into doing when I retire.
Today I located the Meridian cemetery; it's out Kent-Kangley just east of Lake Meridian, behind the Edline funeral home. I never even knew it was there, but always knew there had to be a community that bore the name—both the Kent-Meridian road and the Kent-Meridian high school took their names from the two communities, but Meridian never became a town in its own right.
Today I located the Meridian cemetery; it's out Kent-Kangley just east of Lake Meridian, behind the Edline funeral home. I never even knew it was there, but always knew there had to be a community that bore the name—both the Kent-Meridian road and the Kent-Meridian high school took their names from the two communities, but Meridian never became a town in its own right.
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