RETIREMENT...????

 

Retirement ……?

One of the questions I hear most frequently is ‘what do you do all day?’…

I have a lot of friends who must stay bored when they retired. Not me, I get up at 5:30 am and go to bed at 10pm and am busy all day, every day.

Once you leave the money-making rat race and get to enjoy life, you will find more than you imagined to keep you busy. When you were working you hardly had any spare time to indulge yourself with something fun, didn’t you?

We were too busy trying to get ahead. Bigger house, better car, new schools for our kids…go..go…go…never stop. Always something more to do before we rested. We all thought it would stop at some point. Trying to make our kids lives a better than we had when we were young. We never even realized the vicious treadmill of life we were on for so many years.

Then one day, for some of us, it stopped, just like that. For those of us that it happened to, we are most blessed and fortunate. I only wish all of us could get this get this experience.

Some of us take up golf…not me, I suck at golfing.

Some others take up fishing, not me, I’m a terrible fisherman.

Tried wood carving…nope, not for me.

I think the problem for me is that my mind is still moving at the warp speed zone of the business world while I am now living in the school speed zone of being retired. My mind is at odds with itself. Think about it, I started working at 14 years old and quit at 82….that’s 68 years of employment with routines and responsibilities. Now, you must mentally adjust to a lifestyle that had you racing along a plateau very quickly and then falling off a cliff into soft clover. You aren’t hurt or shocked, just confused without any direction or guidance except yourself.

It is much harder than you think. Some folks can’t handle it and go back to work. Some give up and complain about not having any friends or purpose. They descend into depression because of their lack of mobility or economics or they are just plain tired out after so many years of struggles.

May I humbly suggest that you deal with the realities of your older years. First, your friend base is shrinking due to deaths or folks moving away. None of us can do the things we did when we were in our 20’s. my body might be 84,  but my mind is still chugging along about age 12.   

The reason I failed at golf, fishing, and wood carving is simple.

I didn’t practice nor did I take the time to learn about any of these to the extent where I was successful.

Now, I have time. Now I am going to learn how to get proficient at something. It takes time. Time I never had until now. Now there isn’t any excuses for failure. I can try, I can fail and I can try again, until I get it right.

I am going to learn how to grow things , like plants and flowers. There is a lot to learn and a plethora of information on what to do and not to do. I can do this. I must do this if I want to survive and keep from getting stale in these remaining years.

You can too, pick something, learn about it. If you don’t like it, try something new. No one is grading you at this point in our lives, are they? Experience curiosity again. Get those long dormant juices flowing. Find a solution to some part of the problem or some hobby. It will be good for you.

Remember, life isn’t about avoiding the storm, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.

You might not have done so in the past, do it now.

See you next week..Peary Perry

 

Ps…pass this along to your parents or grandparents…