For the past 2 months, I’ve been researching my family tree. As I mentioned in a previous blog, […]
Category Archive: Random Musings
It’s been a challenging year. I’ve been visible. Then I wasn’t. Then I was again. I felt like the Cheshire Cat at times.
It was a year of Firsts, Lasts, and Never Agains. Lots of stuff has happened, and I’m still trying to process it all. Other than the year our son was born, I can’t remember any time that had this kind of upheaval. I hope it’s an anomaly, and not a new normal.
I was sitting in LAX last week, waiting for my delayed flight, when I finished the book. I closed it, and just looked at the cover for a bit, digesting what I had just read. A woman sitting across from me asked me if I thought it was worth reading. She had bought it, but was afraid to read it after hearing the reviews. She said it was such a shame what they did to the elderly Harper Lee in publishing the manuscript, and that she would feel guilty about reading it.
People mean well. They just don’t always convey that sentiment properly. Now that I’m telling people about my plans to retire at the end of August, I’ve been getting a lot of comments – mostly because I’m retiring early and I’m pretty visible in my industry. The comments have ranged from the typical, to the pretty personal, to the extremely skeptical. I hear this is typical for someone who is just about to retire, but I must say some of them surprised me. I thought I’d share a few of them with you. Who knows? You may get them too, when it’s your time.
I’ve always wondered what that meant. Not being the superstitious type in general, (unless the SF Giants are in the playoffs) I had never really followed astrological phenomena. Thanks to my college roommate Selene for clueing me in, now I know. Major appliances and pretty much anything else that you need will spontaneously decide to break, and break badly. Hey – I’m pretty much retired, so don’t I get a break?
I knew it was time to retire when I realized I had lost not only my sense of humor, but any vestige of creativity I once had. It was like there was a blockage in my brain that got worse as stress increased. My best girlfriend and therapist recommended art therapy, and my life coach and dear friend seconded that notion. With two such recommendations like that, it became number one on my Decompression List.
My apologies it’s been so long since I’ve written a post on this blog. My mother-in-law (MiL) had an unfortunate accident that involved a fractured tailbone. Extremely painful for her, and in a different way, no less so for us. My last 6 weeks have had every available minute devoted to her affairs when I wasn’t working. It hasn’t been the fun that I had hoped. Now that she’s on the mend and doing well, I have a few reflections on this thing called Semi-Retirement.
There are so many emotions roiling about right now, that I am not sure which one is the most dominant. I think the top five are: scared, apprehensive, sad, wistful, and a bit excited. What’s even stranger, I’ve discovered you CAN feel all of these at once without exploding. And it’s OK.
Late Boomers are retiring earlier, and are facing challenges no other group has before, and we are looking for information to ease our path. Other than financial stuff designed to scare you into thinking you’ll never have enough money – so you might as well get that job in retail immediately – there is very little useful info available on what really happens to you when you retire. This is a major life transformation, and the best advice is to go back to work for less money? That’s like telling an alcoholic to have another drink – of the cheap stuff.
The User's Guide to Retirement 