Was laid off a few months ago, I didn’t mind. I had become tired of my job and where I was living, took it as an opportunity to move and look for a new job. A little vacation where I could sleep in and relax and binge-watch and read a lot.
And I did that for a couple of months and I loved it. I binged and read and I started to learn guitar again. But now, after 3 months, getting a little tired of it. In a 24 hour day, if you sleep 8 hours, and then you add taking a shower and buying and preparing food, and paying the bills and putting gas in the car and feeding the cat, you got 12 hours at least in a day to fill. I can’t read for 4 hours, play guitar for 4 hours, and watch 4 hours of video.
I could and I did, but it has made me realize that if all your time is free time, you don’t appreciate it. You can’t look forward to the weekend if every day is a weekend. Until now I have been selective in the jobs I have applied for, I have been applying for “suitable work”. Now I will take just anything, got enough money in the bank to live on for a year even if I am not working.
Getting back to my original point, I am 8 years away from retirement age. When I get there, I think I am going to keep on working. Part-time, maybe, unless I have a job that I just really love.
My mother “retired” about 7 years ago. She’s a pharmacist, and every time I called in on her, she’d be at the store working. She’s really bad at the whole retirement thing.
She eventually cut it all off once Covid flared up, as my step-dad was 89 years old last March. But she’s unstoppable - she’ll never not have projects and volunteering events lined up for herself.
I’m with you! I like getting up in the morning, getting ready for the day and having somewhere to go. I love being home but I love it because it’s something I look forward to after work. Being home all day, every day gets old. I’m afraid I’d get into a bad rut and bad habits.
There’s certainly no right or wrong on this one, it’s just personality. One former co-worker retired after 37 years and immediately got a part-time consulting job to stay busy. He loves working and used to often effectively do it for free.
Another retired after 34 years and recently told me he does very little, is enjoying it immensely and never gets bored of doing next to nothing .
I’m pretty sure I’m going to fall into the latter camp, but I get folks who either love to work in their field or just love staying busy.
I retired in May at 56 years old. Pretty much everything that I love to do is either canceled or severely curtailed because of covid. I am still loving it. Other than the very occasional consulting job if it amuses me, I will never work again. To paraphrase my favorite quote from Office Space, “I didn’t do anything for seven months and it was better than I ever imagined.”
I’m not quite 59 and I guess I have occupational burnout. I’ve done the same job for 31 years, though it is a job with many changing requirements: software engineering for desktop and mobile (these days) apps. There’s lots of opportunities to learn new stuff, but the work required tends to be the same old shit most of the time: interface that thing with this thing, then show a UI to get to that thing. Yada. I’m extremely well paid, but the thrill wears off.
At the end of the year my company shuts down for 10 days. I took the remainder of weekdays off, so I’ve been off for 15 days now, and if I never had to work again I’d be okay!
I mean, since 51 my wife had left me, both of my parents passed away and I’d been diagnosed with cancer and hopefully beat that. Work life tends to be less than satisfying after I guess?
IMHO, retirement is different than not working. When I was unemployed it wasn’t relaxing because I was stressing about needing to get a job. When I was on vacation, I was always aware that I had to go back to work at X date, so I’d best have as much fun as I could as fast as I could. Weekends were all about doing chores so we could be ready to go to work on Monday.
Now that I’m retired, all of that stress is gone. While I would rather be traveling and exploring, I am more than able to enjoy just having time to stand in front of a window and watch the clouds move across the sky.
I don’t think I’ll ever retire, either. I’ve got more than a decade to go, in any case, but even if I could afford to stop working today, I definitely wouldn’t. I might not stay where I am (14 years in), but I’d work at a library, or a liquor store, or a daycare, or a grocery store, or tutoring … I think I’d enjoy anything as long as it doesn’t involve folding clothes.
I find it very hard in general to enjoy “off” time if there’s no “on” time. Even now, with a full-time job but no kids at home anymore, I’m always wondering what to do with all of the time between getting home from work and going to bed.
Since yesterday, I am officially retired, at 65. With a reasonable pension and good savings, I do not need to work any more, but I will finish up some academic projects (mostly writing some papers), but may do some consulting work should a proposed project appeal to me.
First time I retired, at 57, I got bored and went back to work within about a year. From there, I worked on and off at part time and temp jobs for another 8 years, and I re-retired last year. Sorta.
I’m my granddaughter’s daycare, and that kid keeps me busy! Plus we’ve been doing a lot of much-needed work on the house - currently, I’m reclaiming our basement as living space. Apart from interacting with a few specific people, I don’t miss work at all. Who knows how I’ll feel after the kid starts school, but for now, grandmothering fills a good chunk of my retirement, and it suits me.
While I’m not rushing to retire at the earliest possible moment (which would be now), I’m weighing the calculations (health, $, healthcare) to make my eventual retirement the most comfortable possible.
But I could imagine some low stress pt-time work being of interest. For me, such as at a golf course a couple of days a week. Just to put a structure to the days/week.
I won’t retire until I’m basically forced into it because it’s not healthy to retire completely,and I also don’t see myself having so much financial independence that I can take my final 5-10 years for granted. Most people use up the bulk of their savings in those final 5 years on their own care, and that’s a trend that’ll probably become more extreme.
The OP may find these recent threads interesting. They’re not on exactly the same point, but a lot of similar ground is covered and lots of interesting war stories and perspectives come out. The second one is especially relevant to the OP.
I’ve been counting the days until retirement for years, now - I have around 2 years to go.
I’m not one who gets bored easily; I could spent an entire day doing next to nothing. But I do see that, if every day were like that, one might easily fall into a different sort of rut.
I could see myself working part time, I suppose, but it would be doing something that has as close to zero stress coupled with positive enjoyment as is possible.
Maybe work in a used bookstore or local movie house (if they still exist, that is).
Between mid-March and mid-September, I wasn’t working for the first time in my life (head injury recovery). That particular reason for not working, and that particular chunk of time, were far from ideal and kept me from doing many of the things that I always imagined I would do if I weren’t working. However, I think I would have absolutely no problem finding a million things to do besides have a bunch of immigration lawyers driving me nuts. I was forced not to stare at a computer all day, but I grew a shit-ton of vegetables and set up a volunteer veggie swap to give them away with a bunch of other people, figured out basic bricklaying on Youtube and finally put together the brick raised bed in the backyard with cement instead of construction adhesive, made a tile backsplash in the kitchen…there are basically infinite things I would do other than work if I retired now. A ton of travel adventures as long as I am physically able to do so, for one thing.
I’ve got about 3½ years to go before retirement at 65. What I want and need to do is take one year in which only I determine what I’ll do each day, after which I’ll probably do what I saw a retiree doing with a project I was with; he just does temp work from time to time if his temp agency offers something that looks interesting or appealing.
But I love cycling and reading and I would be a happy camper going for rides or walks with stops for espresso and/or a couple of beers and a book. I am also fully cognizant that my wife will find things for us to do as well and she rarely steers us wrong.
I’m about 5 years from retirement. I actually sort of like the work I do, I just don’t like being tied to it, and my company doesn’t have part-time workers. I can see myself maybe upping my volunteerism. I recently started keeping bees. I’ve started riding horses again. I’m sure I’ll find enough to do to keep me occupied.
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