It’s a very different concept than a party with a host and invitations. There is no host, only organizers. No individual invitations, only flyers. It’s like a mash-up of two different concepts you may be familiar with. You are probably familiar with the sort of party where there is no actual host (just maybe a person providing space) and people who know each other either bring food and drink or chip in cash to buy food/drinks. And you may be familiar with New Year’s Eve or Superbowl parties held at restaurants/bars that literally anyone can buy a ticket to. These are in between - tickets aren’t sold to anyone off the street but also, the attendees don’t all know each other. Some may not even really know the honoree but they generally all know other people attending the party. Sometimes they are a small dinner at a restaurant where everyone essentially pays for their own meal plus a little extra for the honoree and a gift and sometimes they involve more than 100 attendees with a cocktail hour , an open bar , a DJ and door prizes. The honoree has minimal involvement in planning - they approve the date and maybe the type of food but that’s about it. There is no way this sort of party happens without selling tickets - maybe a couple of co-workers will buy a cake for the conference room Tuesday afternoon but a couple of friends are not paying for a $100 per person party.
I have never heard of it in private industry but most of the people I know who have retired from non-government jobs had some sort of company-sponsored party. Maybe cake in the conference room, maybe a small dinner, maybe a big party but paid for by the company. That doesn’t happen in government agencies here - any celebrations are paid for by staff.
I announced my retirement date six months in advance. A couple of weeks later another engineer announced the same date. We both started working there within a few months of each other over fourteen years prior and both have the same first name. They were going to have a joint shindig but it would have been in April of 2020 so it didn’t happen.
Before I retired I went around the house looking for all the stuff I didn’t have time to do while working, which ranged from simple things like cleaning a closet to long term things like reading all the books I’ve collected. A lot of it I did, but I added more which I mentioned in my first response. I often say I need to retire from retiring so I have more time. A great thing is going to the story on weekdays so you don’t have to fight all the working people there on Saturday and Sunday. We can also take trips whenever we please. We just spent two days in Monterey in the middle of the week just because.
I retired in 2006 and do not miss a thing about my old job. Immediately after retiring I relocated from Chicago to Chapel Hill NC and spent the first six months there trying to catch up on all the unwatched DVDs and unread books that had piled up over the years (I also treated myself to re-watching all five seasons of Babylon 5.)
I occasionally thought about getting a part-time job, preferably at the Borders bookstore that was walking distance from my residence. But it never happened; I did apply at the Borders but never heard back from them. I’ve been filling my time with going to the occasional show or movie with a friend and going shopping for groceries and books (at least until the Borders closed). Lately it’s been more like grocery shopping and doctor visits, along with more or less monthly visits to Massage Envy. Along with three or four trips to Chicago to attend conventions and visit friends and family, Health permitting, I also been planning other trips (like my recent foray to Iceland and Glasgow).
Not me (i’m still working) but my husband. He retired about 1-1/2 years ago. He was a welder, fabricator, etc. He is always the life of the party, joking around and laughing. I can tell he misses joking around with the guys. He really doesn’t have any friends. He’s an only child. He has cousins that he talks to on the phone once in a while. He helped out his mom a lot and spoke with her daily. She died last March, so he doesn’t have that anymore. He putts around the house doing things here and there. He has the 3 dogs to contend with. Buy I can tell he’s bored. I told him when he was talking about retiring, that he is the kind of person that needs to be working. He needs to be around people and he needs to keep busy. I think it’s good for his mental health. He has talked about going back to work on a part-time basis next year.
Retired professor here, not missing my job even a tiny bit. I can still do research, write books and articles, attend conferences–the parts of my job that I liked. I keep in touch with the faculty members I liked via email and phone, sometimes visit the city I worked in, but now live in a place with much better weather. The one thing I guess I do miss is having an IT department to deal with my frequent computer issues, and also getting a new laptop every few years.
Yeah, TRC4941, Mr. brown has the same issue. He retired at the same time I did. He needs projects and problems to work on to keep him busy or he starts to get bored and depressed. Crankiness follows.
He has fixed several issues in the house and yard but has run out of domestic projects.
I did for a couple of years. Maybe less really. I missed the people mainly. And the money was nice. I planned to keep on working for a while because the pay had become nearly all gravy with plenty of savings put away and very little debt. However my role in the supply side of the health care industry ended just as my role on the demand side climbed rapidly.
Now life is different. My time is my own despite limitations. I like retirement and I don’t want to wreck it by working.
To repeat what so many others have said, I don’t miss the work although I do miss several of the people.
In fact, it wasn’t long into retirement that I realized just how little I was able to enjoy life while work was dominating all my time and energy. So not only do I not miss work, but I retroactively like work less now than I did when I was experiencing it in real time. When I left I envisioned taking some downtime to recover from burnout and then picking up part-time work to help fill my days but now I can’t imagine ever willfully seeking employment again.
I had an excellent work ethic as an employee but for better or worse that does not translate for me into needing to be busy all the time or needing a sense of purpose outside the workplace. Not that I don’t keep busy but none of what I do amounts to much of anything other than enjoying a much less stressful existence.
The company I left has been in severe trouble in the 3-1/2 years since I’ve been gone. There’s been a lot of attrition, so even if hypothetically I wanted to go back in order to be with the people I miss, many of them are also gone now or in the process of leaving. Like others, I still occasionally get to see many of the friends I had made there.
Retiring when I did was the best decision I’ve ever made and I’m definitely not looking back.
Well, to answer your question - oh. hang on, someone else did…
Yeah, exactly that. I spent nearly twenty years behind a desk staring at a screen. I just wanted physicality back in my life when I retired. I cycle (rule is 140 miles a week, but that’s tough at this time of year). I have an allotment (/community garden) and grow lots of our veg. We walk loads. I forage fruit and make jam. Since starting the retirement process (I phased myself out over two years) I went from 95.2 kg to 68 kg (though I’m a kilo over weight at the moment).
We travel lots. we go to a load of comedy gigs, we see our retired friends. I don’t get bored.
No, I don’t miss working. The only thing I do miss is from an earlier phase in my career, when the job involved working in sterile areas. When I quit all that for the (much more lucrative) desk job(s), I knew I would miss that and I miss it still. The discipline of dressing and entering the sterile area, the way you have to move, the way you have to limit movement, touch as little as possible, control your breathing - it’s so completely different from the rest of life. Maybe meditation is like that?
I had a HUGE backlog of reading when I retired. I’ve ploughed through that and have continued on with more. I’m like Burgess Meredith in that old Twilight Zone episode – time enough! But with no vision problems.
I’m also very happy to follow my own biological clock – especially not getting up at 4:30am everyday and getting home at nearly 4:00 pm. Then, having to cram all my chores and entertainment into two days before back to the grind. It’s nice.
I was ‘forcibly’ retired 8 years ago - ie - my job was outsourced to a cheaper labour region. I decided I did not want to do the office drudge again, so I didn’t go back into my old profession, but took up a fairly simple, low-paying 2-day a week job, where I am a contract worker and basically my own boss (I can pick and choose if and when I take on a particular job).
It’s been great. Oh sure, I remember those days at work where ‘I showed the entire department how brilliant I was!’ - but really, those moments were minor points between the hours, days and months of endless routine. The small, part-time job is great - it makes me get up, put my pants on, make myself respectable and switch on the brain once or twice a week. In those 8 years I’ve earned about 2 years worth of my previous salary (I didn’t work much during Covid) .
The key is: After retirement, keep working. But don’t work to make money - work because you want to.
I retired about six years ago from my medical/surgical practice. While I do miss my patients, my staff, and the buzz of being in the OR, I don’t miss the soul-crushing avalanche of paperwork and bureaucracy that modern medicine has become. Good riddance to all that red tape I say.
In my post-retirement life, my youngest daughter and I volunteered at a local cat rescue. It was a heartwarming and rewarding experience, though she took the phrase “save the cats” too personally. We now share our home with a clowder of five felines. I like cats—but when they outnumber you five to one, you realize you’re not the boss anymore. Let’s face it, cats offer about as much mercy as a DMV clerk on a Monday morning.
These days, I’ve embraced my creative side with web development, social media content creation, and graphic design. I keep it simple with just a handful of clients—it keeps my mind somewhat sharp, my time occupied, and my wallet occasionally surprised by a little extra cash.
Each day is invented at random as it unfolds. I stuff all my appointments into a single week in each month so the rest of the time is unsullied random play.
Since I work from home, I can do what I want when I want, but I do need to follow a bit of a schedule.
Not really planning on any projects. Been there done that. Projects are actually what I’m trying to escape from. Both work and home. They are all too long to list. I’ve done it.
My projects, instead of designing and building a two story addition to my home, will be - music, and art. I must get back into the brush, instead of the hammer.
Since I work from home, I can do what I want when I want, but I do need to follow a bit of a schedule.
Not really planning on any projects. Been there done that. Projects are actually what I’m trying to escape from. Both work and home. They are all too long to list. I’ve done it.
My projects, instead of designing and building a two story addition to my home, will be - music, and art. I must get back into the brush, instead of the hammer.
What has given me hope for retirement is the people I work with. They are very, very sharp. That’s great. So it makes me comfortable to let this go, I could not leave this to a bunch of dumb asses.
