Photo by Yi Liu on Unsplash
One day you have a full time job, and the next day you don’t. Your activities are different, your sense of self-worth may have changed, and your relationships may also have evolved.
Full time jobs were often the anchor tenant, the one thing that you built everything else around. Starting on that first day of retirement, the anchor tenant is gone. What is the building block around which to build this next stage of your life?
For lots of retirees, there is no one main building block. Instead there may be a mosaic with different elements. Life can be a rich blend of several important activities that may take some trial and error in order to blend them correctly. The blend may include a dose of volunteering, a toe still in the water on work-related activities, more family time, some travel or other leisure activities, or some new spirituality. Each retiree may have a different mix of things they are juggling, but there are opportunities to have several balls in the air in this stage of your life.
Does having multiple disparate activities feel a bit weird? Does it take some getting used to?
Let’s hear from some retirees who have raised this issue during interviews:
“I flunked retirement. I was so worried about not having enough to do that I said yes to everything that came along. I’ve got more to do than when I was working full time. I’ve got to figure out how to scale back.
“I’ve spent a fair amount of time hiking, flying, visiting friends, and lots more grandson time. The question I now need to discern is if we’re put here for a reason and there’s something more to be done.”
“Having been so career-oriented for most of my life, I do feel like I should have more focus. I’m a generalist. That’s maybe just where I need to be at this time. There is something about it not feeling quite right. I haven’t been able to put my finger on what that is. I wake up very interested in what does today have to bring and how could I live most fully today. Letting go of old patterns is hard and moving into areas of uncertainty is hard.”
“Managing retirement is going to be easy. Seriously. I think that retirement is easier for women than men. My men clients have a lot harder time because their identity is so caught up in being a doctor. Managing lots of different activities is easy. I live by my Outlook calendar. I put my personal activities, work activities, dates to remember all in one place. It’s color coded and on my phone.”
“I had six months of serious illness. I had a chance to sit back and reflect about something else I might be doing. I was a changed person. I began to offer my services to numerous little nonprofits.”
“I wrote myself a little mission statement which is “to be a good steward of my experience, strength and hope. Underneath that I need to flesh out my mission a bit more. Three buckets were to keep the business open, volunteer, and write. The fourth bucket was an open bucket which was something that might come along.”
There is an art form developed by experienced retirees. They are learning to juggle with lots of balls in the air. They get a different reward for each individual retirement activity, but the largest reward may be in the sum of lots of different things that add up to your retirement lifestyle.
In a recent podcast, Rick Nuske interviews Richard Haiduck about retirees doing a lot of different things that add up to their retirement.
Follow Richard on Twitter @richarddhaiduck and find more of his work and information about his book on his website at RichardHaiduck.com.