One of the things I disliked most about working full time – even when I really liked the actual work I was doing and the people I worked with – was the rigidity of the days.
My boss was great about allowing flexible work scheduling whenever possible. However, back-to-back-to-back meetings often meant “not possible today.” There were too many days that I’d spend hours - especially morning hours - glued to my computer screen without a break. I’d sometimes have difficulty squeezing in things as simple as making a cup of tea.
That’s not a great way to live, at least for me.
For example, I like starting my day with some exercise. But unless I got up fairly early (and I’m not a morning person), exercise often ended up pushed to later in the day.
I rebelled a bit against all that structure my first month of retirement by spending many mornings in the most relaxed ways possible. Some days I’d lounge in bed reading for an hour or two and then putter around the house or yard. So it turned out that unless I went to a morning class at the gym, I often didn’t exercise until close to lunchtime anyway many days (although at least I had the option to relax with a morning beverage). By the time I got in gear after lunch, much of the day had passed.
That’s a delightful way to spend a relaxing vacation, but I’m not sure I want that to be the rest of my days. Now that I’m feeling somewhat recharged and it’s after Labor Day, it seems like time to re-think the next few months.
“Labor Day” is kind of a funny signal for someone who’s not doing paid labor. But I still feel the end of languid summer days even though I’m no longer working, just as I felt a post-Labor-Day shift while employed even though I didn’t have summers off.
July and August felt different on the job. Things slowed down. There were fewer meetings and less rush hour traffic. Some years we got to leave early on Fridays. After the Labor Day weekend, things ramped up again. Meeting calendars filled up.
Now it’s mostly cooler evening temperatures, earlier sunsets, and a different angle of the sun that are signaling the change of seasons. But it’s still a signal. And that signal says “gear up a bit.”
So, I’m starting a weekly American Sign Language Zoom class tomorrow. I’ve signed up for a couple of live online tech webinars this week. And, I’ve been asked to teach a two-hour R class at an investigative journalism conference next month that I’m likely to do.
I’m also getting more serious about crafting my new social life.
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Socializing in Retirement
If you’ve got work friends who are all in the same office, at least some of your social life may not take a ton of planning. People are already there in one place. You’re already seeing each other and talking. It’s not so much extra effort to talk about doing things that aren’t work related, either during lunchtime or after work.
That kind of spontaneous social planning is something many retirees - and remote workers - don’t have once we stop working in a physical office. Casual social interactions took more effort and planning when I was a remote worker than when I was office-based.
Now social interaction needs to be even more intentional, since I don’t regularly talk with work friends as part of a job.
The good news is I have more time and energy to arrange ad-hoc social activities now that I’m retired. That may sound silly: How much time does it take to send a text or make a phone call? But when people are working and maxed out with job, family, home, and other responsibilities, making plans with friends can be one of the things that gets tossed overboard.
In writing about America’s so-called epidemic of loneliness, Olga Khazan posits in The Atlantic: “Americans have friends. We just never really see them . . . A slew of books and apps aim to help people tend to their friendships, but these tools all have the same limitation: They put the onus on each individual to initiate and maintain contact. Each person has to send messages and sync up schedules. . . . You can’t just show up on a Sunday and find a few hundred of your friends in the same building.” Or even just a few.
I’m happy to say that I got together with friends every workday last week, including hours walking around Boston with one friend, lunch & an afternoon at a local vineyard with two others, and still another lunch catching up with good friends we hadn’t seen in a couple of years. And, I’ve got plans for at least one more in-person catch-up later this week.
I still don’t know what my routine will look like longer term, and how I’ll balance down time with fun time, learning/volunteering time, and perhaps even freelance paid work time. But I refuse to worry about that today. This month’s focus is creating a lifestyle that works for now. Once outdoor-fun season wraps up, I’ll start figuring out the next phase.