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I made a spur-of-the-moment decision (I tend to be quite decisive) and retired 2½ years before I planned to.
It was in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Retirement during a pandemic isn’t fun. We did manage to squeeze in a dinner with a limited number of people in attendance and in a separate wide-open space of a local restaurant. That was nice. But I missed seeing all the folks that should have been there, as I’d worked in more than one department over my career at a large organization. I still run into people who don’t know I retired.
A dear former work colleague messaged me saying: “Retirement is like being 18 again with so many options to choose from! But hopefully less broke.” I go back to that message every once in a while as this friend died unexpectedly a few weeks after I retired, at much too young an age. It really rocked me and made me think.
Life is a gift. So, what am I going to do with that responsibility? Not take myself so damn seriously, for one!
Retirement for many seems to continue to be perceived as the “golden years” time of life from a bygone era. It’s often assumed both partners in a pair are retired and have limitless means to embark on global travel. (Not so much during a pandemic.) I think the assumptions sometimes are what people are hoping their retirements will be like. Often, I sense people are desperate to get away from the hamster wheel of life that they’re spinning on. Been there, done that.
I also talked with a lot of folks who were also newly or longer retired and asked them about their experiences (or was given unsolicited advice). I found many similar experiences to my own. We all struggled with the question of “What do I do now?” in different ways. Some advised not to commit to anything or sign up for anything in the first year. One fellow told me that when he retired from his corporate gig that it felt like he’d been on the bullet train and got dumped off on a dirt road in the wilderness. The analogy resonated with me.
Retirement isn’t this magic utopia of leisure and fun (as if you’re on a lifelong vacation). You do have more time but it seems to magically fill up with the day-to-day things you did before you retired.
As a child, my parents described me as “high strung” and I grew into a busy young adult, figuring out various career paths as I went. The busier the job, the more I loved it. When I stayed home (sort of) when my kids came along, I was always busy, busy, busy. Super Mom on caffeine.
I realized that I had fallen into being defined by my work life more than my home life. I’m not sure some people would see that from the outside, but it was reality for me. The work/life balance scale had been skewed to 80/20 it seems. Time to flip that switch, right? Not so easy.
So, like any adrenalin junkie, I eased my way into the switch with work-from-home contracts. That filled the first six months of retirement up nicely. I reacquainted myself with my long-ago-shelved creative pursuits and artsy things. I expanded my time doing genealogical research. And I read. A lot. I also, to my spouse’s delight, got back into the kitchen (another creative outlet). We went from SkipTheDishes to smiling about all the dishes.
I decided to do some major self-care. Things I had ignored for years with Band-Aid solutions in my health, I decided to fix. Along that path I learned that Google is great for certain things but can’t replace years of medical training and experience. Go figure.
I’m fine in the grand scheme of things. Life keeps changing and I’ve learned that’s not a bad thing. Change provides me with opportunities to grow and learn. And if there’s one thing I love, it’s learning new things.
Now, 2½ years after calling my work life quits, I refer to myself as fully retired.
My friend who said retirement is like being 18 again was right. Maybe not exactly in the sense she meant it back then, but certainly in learning to celebrate this new chapter and figure out for myself what was in it (and what wasn’t). I feel comfortable in a new way, for the first time in my life. And that’s a gift in and of itself.
Janine Harasymchuk lives in Winnipeg.