You “get” the concept that retirement means not working, and you’ve arranged a pension or nest egg which should cover your costs till you head for the great beyond. So now you just retire and start smiling, right? Wrong. The transition may be jarring, and if not done well, can lead to many outcomes other than Smiling Retirement.
That video I mentioned in Part One talked about the Vacation Phase of retirement: the few weeks or months where the lack of structure provided by work gives the new retiree the sensation of being on vacation. Days become irrelevant, or as retirees joke, a week consists of “six Saturdays and a Sunday.” Things like school calendars, holidays, and long weekends can creep up on you since they no longer seem relevant. Most everybody enjoys this at first, but eventually the sameness of the lack of structure begins to grind on you. We generally limit our tours and cruises to ten-to-twelve days for the same reason; otherwise, it all begins to blend together.
Turns out, humans need routines. If work doesn’t provide one, you have to come up with your own. The beauty of retirement is you’re free to develop your own. Perhaps you’re a night owl who had a career which required an early morning start; now your day can start at 10:00 am and end at 3:00 am, if you like. Never had time to fit in exercise? You do now. When do you eat, and what’s your big meal? All up to you. And you can change it, to see what works.
I started eating a huge breakfast (bacon or sausage, eggs, avocados, tomatoes, hash browns or a bagel) every morning, after a career of having only a banana and a cup of coffee. It was heaven, and I didn’t need to eat again until dinner. But while I enjoyed this schedule, my digestive tract didn’t, and it made its objections known. I switched to some fruit or yogurt and coffee in the morning, and a large lunch in the mid afternoon, which my body ratified. I moved exercise to the late morning after only exercising after lunch for decades. I found starting my day with prayers meant I didn’t skip them later, and I was in a better mood regardless of how I slept. You get to experiment with things you always did one way, because now you can.
If you don’t establish a routine, you’ll get bored. Then you’ll feel a powerful pull to go back to work, if only for the routine. Or you might substitute some other thing (volunteering, for example) for work to provide your routine. But that is putting the cart before the horse, so to speak. Find the routine that works for you, makes you comfortable, then fill in your hobbies and activities around it.
Experimentation is just as important when developing your new (or rediscovering your old) interests. Take up the guitar? Why not! Learn to cook Welsh Rarebit? Sure! Join a charity or service organization? Of course. But whatever you do, never, never, never impose a “success” filter on it. It’s ok to consider whether you can afford a hobby (financially or in terms of time), but don’t start evaluating “am I any good at this?” or “is this doing any good for that?” Those are business/work concepts, and you don’t do that anymore, right? If you like it and can afford it, keep doing it. If not, don’t.
It is easy to fall back into workday notions of success, competition, and merit. But you’re living, not working. Perhaps we can learn something from the way children behave. When a child finds something they really enjoy, they’ll get lost in it. They don’t start asking “how good am I?” “or “what’s the purpose of this?”, they just enjoy themselves. They haven’t met the work world yet, but they have mastered one key to retirement!
The vacation and experimentation periods of retirement are incredibly rewarding. Getting to try out new things without any pressure to “do well” or “succeed” is liberating, once you understand it. How long do they last? How long do you last? To some extent, the two timelines are the same. As time goes by, you’ll find a daily routine that fits. You’ll find hobbies and interests that fit, and people who also fit. But all that may change. Friends asked me why I stopped attending a group, and I said (truthfully) “it seemed too much like work.” You may get too tired for pickleball, or too old for globetrotting, too bored for politics. It happens.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that this phase is just a transition. You may enjoy the transition, but you haven’t reached Smiling Retirement yet!