After a grand total of three days of retirement, so far the biggest surprise has been my relatively wide-open calendar. No back-to-back-to-back Zoom meetings tomorrow! No urgent emails to drop everything for! No checking my work schedule before deciding to do . . . whatever I want.
I’ve still got plenty of things I need to do – my laundry still doesn’t do itself, to name just one example. But I don’t have to wedge all my errands and chores in between a lot of blocked-out weekday work hours anymore.
However, even though I was 100% ready to finally control my own schedule, it still feels a bit disorienting at times to . . . actually be in control of my own schedule. Not for a week or two of vacation, but stretching for months.
This is definitely not a bad feeling! More like, as I said, surprising. Having so much more time under my control is a big shift. And it’ll take awhile before I get a sense of how much I want scheduled vs how much to leave free.
That’s one of many reasons why I’m glad I retired in the summer. If I haven’t gotten around to planning anything but don’t want to spend the day doing chores, there are plenty of last-minute things I know I’ll enjoy: visiting a park, garden, or beach; heading into Boston to walk around; taking a bike ride; or even just sitting in the yard with a good book.
If I want something a little more structured, there are a lot of fun things going on this time of year that make it easy to find things to do. And if I choose to have an unscheduled day to relax, it seems more natural to slow down this time of year.
But that’s me. I detest winter (although I’m trying to work on that attitude), but not everyone does. If you’re a winter sports addict or otherwise love that time of year, it might be a great fit for you to wrap up your career in December. Or, maybe you’re a gardener and would love to begin retirement at the start of the growing season.
Of course, not everyone has the option of choosing their retirement date, or the luxury of looking forward to a schedule without heavy caregiving responsibilities or medical issues. However, if you’re lucky to have flexibility, decent health, and some retirement time to call your own, it might make sense to consider retiring at a time of year which offers a lot of compelling things for you to enjoy.
I’ve been keeping a to-do list of “retirement fun ideas”, and many of them need decent weather: walking on a local trail, strolling Newbury Street or the North End in Boston, taking a bike ride, heading to the beach, meeting friends for lunch (since I remain Covid cautious and don’t eat indoors at restaurants, that, too, requires sit-outside conditions).
There certainly are things on that list I can do in bad weather, such as going to a museum or visiting family & friends indoors. I’ll also be signing up for an online class or two when the weather turns.
But my possibilities expand in good weather. And I think that’s going to help me transition from Type A working professional to happy retiree.
To be clear, I do know that “happiness” won’t mean “do nothing but fun things solely for my own enjoyment” in the long term. Retirement is still real life, and things like a sense of purpose and helping others are still important. I’m not sure exactly what that will look like – several retired friends tell me that I’ll likely go through some trial and error before finding my path. Initially, though, I’m planning on taking a few months of what I guess will be an extended “vacation” before trying to calibrate how I might want this to work.
So far this week I’ve got a walking club (possibly two), outdoor yoga class, outdoor tai chi class, and outdoor blues concert on the schedule, as well as a webinar about generative AI I’d signed up for while working that I still want to attend. More slots are open!
For now, I’m eagerly looking forward to diving into my To-Do List of Fun this week – my first full week of retirement.
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