Twelve Months On

Today marks a full twelve months since I retired.

How has it all gone? Well...it is very much like this:

There was never a formal retirement plan, but the intention was for me to finish up and slot into a retired life. Then her indoors, who is a few years younger than me, would retire towards toward the end of this year. What we had not anticipated was her losing her job last April. But when did life ever go as planned? We have made some adjustments and moved on.

So what have I learned from retirement?

First of all, life us too short for cheap wine and crap coffee.

Second is that there is no cookie cutter solution so ignore everything that people tell you about what to expect and what you should do.

For example, I was cautioned that I would miss work.  The final day, I was told, would a series of recurring thoughts... "this will it would be the last time I will be doing this". For me that was not the case. I handed back my laptop and other Company equipment, and walked out the door. I haven't looked back or thought about work at all.

I was also cautioned that I would miss the people and that was a real concern to me because for 25 years I worked with some extremely skilled and dedicated people resolving complex operational problems. But while I had that deep respect for these people and genuinely enjoyed working with them we had little in common - I mean none of them played with toy soldiers - and we didn't socialise much other than annual Christmas events and the occasional shared lunch break. So other than some email banter with one or two of them and some vague suggestions of "maybe coffee or lunch one day",  I have had no contact and frankly haven't missed them.

Another falsehood is that you must have goals. Goals by nature have a timeline that needs to be met, but the beauty of retirement is no timeline and you get to set the pace of life. There is, however, a need for purpose.  That purpose can be as simple and mundane as mowing the lawns on a Monday, grocery shopping on Tuesday, Wednesday play a wargame, it is the purpose of doing a specific task...and it doesn't have to be done today. Purpose also helps to deflect the question that everyone seems to ask recently retired people "how do you fill the day?"...well very easily, thank you!

For me the most important thing is routine. I have always been and early riser, getting up at 5:00AM to be at work by 6:00 to get those difficult tasks done early when there weren't too many people around to complicate things...of course it helped to beat the morning traffic and allowed me to use the office colour printer to print off those Austrian Napoleonic flags without having to answer any awkward questions. I still rise early (not at 5:00AM though), enjoy an early coffee while reading the newsfeeds and checking out the blogs that I follow. Then, weather permitting, I will take a morning walk of between three or four kilometres and  where possible I repeat that twice later in that day. I am then free to take the rest of the day at my pace. My hobby routine has always been an evening one and I try to retain that because it stops me from getting bored in the evening, although with much of the work on model buildings of late I find myself spending an hour or two on them in the afternoon.

What has become glaringly obvious to me is just how fulfilling our fabulous hobby is. I have said it before, but I often wonder how other people live a full life without models soldiers - building armies, planning scenarios and deciding what to paint tonight. For me our hobby provides pretty much everything I need in retirement: social interaction, intellectual stimulation, motor skills, creativity, purpose.

So am I enjoying retirement? Damned right I am...I have finally found something I am good at!