FALL RETIREMENT

I am going to retire this fall and I am little scared and also a little excited for the changes to come.

My husband is retired and anxiously awaiting for me to be also. I'm 59 and still don't mind going to work but we have planned winters in Florida & saved for travel & want to do all this why we can.

I am a very structured person just worrying how I will fill my time. I hope I can start out positive and enjoy each day. I to don't want to grow old before my time & I feel a part of my identity will be gone when I leave my job.

I am a quiet person & am worried about meeting new people & making new friends.

Any suggestions?

Scared & Excited in the Midwest

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You are only retired once - enjoy!
by: Gordon G Kinghorn

Irwin probably sums it up best – ergo; retirement is indeed a new adventure – it’s not about dropping out – more a case of taking off - and in a completely new direction – from my perspective, it’s one hell of a ride too!

Placing personal health to one side, your biggest asset is your marriage, in fact, any harmonious and loving partnership that finds itself on the threshold of retirement – should embrace it as a team - after all, there is no ‘i’ in ‘team’, – no matter if some consider themselves to be the King of Spades of the Queen of Hearts – as a single card, metaphorically speaking, a pair beats it every time!

My wife and I, both professionally and socially, scurried about for over three decades – oblivious to the fact that we had grown apart - it took retirement, (and my other half’s recent brief illness) to discover just how precious our marital union indeed was – to both of us.

We are now doing so much together – travelling, golfing, (I can’t believe how her game has come-on) eating-out, attending the gym, going to the theatre and enthusiastically engaging in what comes naturally - when the appropriate time and opportunity presents itself of course – something else that was sorely neglected during our working years.

Looking back over the last two decades particularly, I think we must have reserved our sexual activity for purely special occasions – such as the installation of a new Pope or the passing of Halley’s Comet – well, that’s the way it appears now.

With this renaissance in our union, the ability to be frank, honest and more-caring has too surfaced – or should I say, the time currently on our hands has permitted us to exhibit more of the afore-mentioned – especially in me, I sense that my spouse occupied an ill-deserved second-place for far too long – my work being the driving factor – God knows why?

Few, if any of my former colleagues or employers will be at my funeral, nor provide the love or care that my long-suffering wife pledged to undertake way back in the 1979 – it’s astonishing to think that she even opted to stay with me – with hindsight, I don’t believe for one moment that I would have stayed with me – certainly not under the marital conditions that she so endured.

We lay in bed the other morning having a chat, (yet another new experience) and she confided that when I was away from home for days - and sometimes, weeks on end, she endeavoured to reach me across the many miles that separated us by engaging in tantric sex – something she exasperatingly referred to as the “TV Repair Man Experience”, - on asking her why she had utilised such cryptic terminology, she responded by saying, “Well, you wait in all day and nobody comes!” - Ouch!!!

For me, retirement is a little like death by drowning - a truly delightful sensation the moment you stop struggling.

Good luck to you both.

Retirement
by: Irwin

Look at it as a new adventure - one without the many constraints we had when working. Your time is now truly "your time". Find something that truly interests you and that you look forward to doing when you wake up in the morning.

Having one or two interests like that and you will soon be saying like the rest of us do "when did we ever have time to work."

Enjoy - this can be the most fun time of your life.

Never feared retirement
by: Neteret

Like my father, when I retired I had so many activities planned, I am still working on the top four.

Until my father became disabled with age (still alive at 96) he was into everything from chinese style painting to banjo playing.

Now that I am nearly eight years into retirement I am constantly finding things to do. Although I enjoyed my work, I was not my job. I looked forward to retirement and love that now I can do what I want, if I want, when I want.

Once in a great while, I am bored but that only means my brain is working on getting into some sort of mischief.

Retirement means you are Free! Look forward to exploration and inventing.

Fall retirement
by: martha

I think you will be just fine when you retire its going while before I can my husband is retired and I have to make sure all my bills are paid off I am a outgoing person love to talk with people and you will do the same also

martha