I keep in touch with a small handful. I live in a smallish town so I run into others now and then. There were a lot of co workers that I like a lot.
I have 3 different groups of former coworkers that I meet for lunch or dinner about 3-4 times a year. That’s a total of about 10 people. I also participate in a football pool with another 10 guys, but I don’t have any other contact with them.
Part of the beauty of retirement is that you can interact with only those you choose to.
I have four friends from my working days who are actual friends. Despite some physical distance, we meet regularly for lunch or dinner.
It’s always great to see them, and it’s also fun to hear the latest work scuttlebutt.
mmm
Quite right. Although, it does become less interesting as time goes by.
I’ve been retired for almost 3 years now, and keep in touch with with two guys from work regularly, although not that often. I caught up with a few others a while back at a funeral for one of the nurses I had worked with. But frankly without the common interests of surviving work and government bureaucracy together, there’s less and less that currently binds me to my past work friends. Good folks all, but for most of them it was a friendship born out of circumstance rather than deeper connections.
I’ll meet with two or three people who retired about the same time I did for beers. We meet irregularly, about once every two months or so. This month a couple of people who are still working joined us. It’s fun to bitch about the same things we always did, but of course we don’t care. We are planning a guided fishing trip in Louisiana next year. Unlike many of my other friends, it’s nice to have a group that has both the time and money to do things like that. Mostly the time though.
I keep in touch with a couple guys who’re still working. We’ve known each other for 25-35 years during that time shared many adventures at work & off duty.
The conversations remain great until they switch to regaling me with the latest company / union BS or whatever coup or screwing they most recently experienced during the rough and tumble of life on the road in a real-time biz. That stuff bores me to tears even though I used to live it, be an expert in it, and yak about it endlessly with great enthusiasm. Ho hum; so booring.
They’re not local, but they and I are highly mobile so we still see each other face to face every few months. Amazing how old they look and how old I don’t, despite me being the eldest of the three of us. I still think of them (& more strongly me) as being about 35-40.
Due to career circumstances I ended up taking a transfer fairly late in my career & you usually work with (and therefore meet) people either significantly older or younger than you are. Building then maintaining a fresh circle of local contemporaries to keep seeing post-retirement @Dag_Otto style is a great thing if you can manage it. I mostly, not entirely, failed at that.
Whelp, unofficially worked my last day yesterday. I’m vacationing out, so I won’t actually be retired for another month or so. And I haven’t even signed my paperwork yet, so I could still renege. But as far as I’m concerned I’m essentially done. By the time I am actually and technically retired, I’ll be just shy of 35 years on the job with a single employer (with different titles and positions). You’re not gonna see much of that in the future. Hasn’t really fully hit home yet, but man dragging myself in these last few days has been rough 
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Congratulations! 35 years is a helluva run, and you’ve certainly earned your retirement.
Hell yeah! Welcome to the club.
Thanks guys. It’s going to be an adjustment 
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Congratulations, @Tamerlane!
The artist misspelled @Tamerlane, but close enough:
Major congrats on one of the best milestones of most of our lives.
Congrats to Tamerlane. I just got good news, too. I will be able to keep my County healthcare after I retire. It’s been so good for me all these years and I was worried what I’d do without it.
Excellent. Especially useful if you are retiring before age 65 when you can get Medicare. Sure, there’s always ACA, but now you don’t have to worry about income limits to ensure a subsidy.
More than that, you don’t have to worry about the ACA simply disappearing on a random Tuesday due to an emergency executive order.
I’ve got 100 days until retirement. My wife has about 60. I’ve worked for the same employer for 33 years. My wife at the same emloyer as me as I (different department) for 32 years (she worked at another place for 4 years and then went back).
So over sixty years at the same place for us. We have a few stories we could tell.
I retired in June. 38 years at the same school. 30 of the in the same classroom. Lots of different classes across every grade level in 4 different departments.
How’s it going?
Some medical issues, but being out of the classroom is wonderful. I might get bored eventually, but so far I’m enjoying NOT having the stress of being “on” every day.