whan retired what do you to keep busy and not go crazy. (states, engage)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Matisse and Minervah, hopefully I can be polite in asking my questions. At least that is my intention.
I am like many with a drive to accomplish and achieve. That extends to my retirement. I would like to understand the alternate point of view. I am curious. Did this more relaxed point of view follow throughout your lifetime or start in retirement? Do you feel that your life had a meaning and a purpose before retirement? If so and you accomplished everything you intended, what keeps your going in retirement?
jrkliny, 40 years of working hard in my career was enough productivity for me for a lifetime!
I'm about to start doing botanical drawings & paintings, and I'm gathering the books, paint, & pencils to do so!
And yes, my life had purpose and meaning before retirement, and my life has purpose and meaning in retirement.
I just do not need productivity or accomplishments to be happy in retirement.
Not being productivity-oriented does not mean having no interests. I have lots of interests - including reading, gardening & growing flowers, politics, current affairs, knowledge gathering, viewing paintings & art, theater, film, watching live jazz clubs nightly.
Last edited by matisse12; 01-15-2017 at 06:49 PM..
Matisse, thanks. At first glance I got no meaning from your words. I will need to re-read and try again.
I did understand about botanicals. I specialize in photography of landscapes and botanicals. Last year I tried a painting of a botanical subject...actually pastels. It was more or less successful in meeting my basic expectations. Since then I put in lots of hours trying to be able to be able to express myself with pastels. This past month I have gone whole hog. I am averaging 3-4 large pastels per week. About a third are botanicals. I just completed photographing my pastels and am getting ready to send several to juried shows. I have no idea how or if I can post images on this forum but this is probably not a good place to even show an example. I guess as with all my activities and interests, some level of compulsion and obsessive behavior sets in.
jrkliny, 40 years of working hard in my career was enough productivity for me for a lifetime!
I'm about to start doing botanical drawings & paintings, and I'm gathering the books, paint, & pencils to do so!
And yes, my life had purpose and meaning before retirement, and my life has purpose and meaning in retirement.
I just do not need productivity or accomplishments to be happy in retirement.
Not being productivity-oriented does not mean having no interests. I have lots of interests - including reading, gardening & growing flowers, politics, current affairs, knowledge gathering, viewing paintings & art, theater, film, watching live jazz clubs nightly.
Pretty much the same for me. I never felt the need to pursue anything in order to make my life meaningful. What had meaning for me in my life was whatever I was into at the moment that made me satisfied. When I was working, I participated in activities that made me feel happy when I had the free time to do them.
This morning I participated in a "Bag and Tag." This is a group of Seniors who along with some great high school kids bag huge bags of cat and dog food donated by Purina to deliver to the residents in our buildings who might have run a little short in their budget in any given month and can really use the free pet food. The whole thing took about an hour and a half. I intend to do this each month.
The woman who stared this she calls the group "The Pet Association." She and a couple of others will also pet-sit on a moment's notice if someone needs to go to the hospital unexpectedly or needs to have someone take care of their pets when they go on vacation. She was also instrumental in getting a wonderful veterinarian to come to our complex once a month to take care of the pets of those who otherwise find it difficult to get to one on their own.
It makes me happy to participate. Is it productive or an accomplishment? I don't know and don't really care. I'm not keeping score.
An important point (sorry to quote out of context).
Much of philosophy, secular or religious, posits that crucial for happiness is dispensing with the keeping of a score. The "score" could be accumulation of money, peer-reviewed publications by an academic, promotions in the corporate world, reaching a certain 5K run-time or bench-pressing max, grade-point-average in high-school or college, and so forth. For the conventionally more successful people, most of life consists of chasing competitive success, of running up the score. In retirement, this precipitously ends. Now the "score" consists of remaining-years of good health, or other such matters that transcend frenetic competition. How to adjust to this lack-of-score, for persons who had built their lives around the scoreboard?
Certainly, there are people of considerable poise and equanimity, for whom competitive success was never crucial, or at most secondary to unquantified pursuit of personal excellence, without comparison to achievements of others. These perhaps are the wise ones. But what of those who weren't so wise? Must they now become wise in retirement?
Ohio Peasant.... I think you are making a mistake in equating "running up the score" with accomplishment.
For me competition is about the challenge, not beating up someone else or running up the score. It is a way of showing us what is possible and giving us the motivation to advance. I gave none of that up when I retired. In fact, I looked at life as a series of new opportunities. After retirement, I have the time to accomplish the goals I set for myself.
Reasoning, learning, understanding, growing, advancing.....those are all important to me. What do those mean in the grand scheme of the universe? I have no idea. It goes back to Descartes. I think, therefore I am. When I no longer think anything worth the effort, I might as well not exist. I have no interest in being a dog until I die....eat, sleep, and whatever that third thing was.
I have no desire to feel productive in retirement and feel no guilt about it.
My wife does somewhat, so she's always got something going but it usually seems like a lot more planning than actually doing. Don't tell her I noticed that.
Productive? No. There are things I have to do like cook and clean, do laundry, take care of the dog. I don't enjoy it very much but when I think back, I can remember old people who were really proud that they could do these things for themselves. I guess I should be proud of myself except that it's kind of boring.
Guilt? No way. I didn't enjoy working that much but I did tend to throw myself into any job I had. But every chance I got, I'd be doing something that I enjoyed. I'm trying to get back into doing some drawing or painting, trying to find a place to take some classes so I could get started again.
Genealogy is really time consuming and it can keep you up all night long thinking that just reading one more page might bring you that missing clue. At the end of my working years it started to intrude upon my job. Funny thing, I was a teacher and just around that time the school principal got hooked on genealogy too. I was the only person at work whose eyes didn't glaze over when he started going on and on about his ancestors, lol.
But it's a great hobby and it's something you can pass down to the next generation. I've found that it's also a great use for those old photographs we're always wondering what to do with. You can scan them into your family trees on Ancestry.
There's always water aerobics at the Y or other place that has a heated indoor pool. I feel absolute joy when I'm bobbing around in that tepid water. No worries about sun exposure either.
Then you can sweat it out in the sauna afterwards.
An older cousin told me she felt guilty about reading during the day. That seemed a little strange. I know I never want to watch tv during the day but it's not out of guilt. It comes from the mother of a childhood friend who used to sit around all day long watching soap operas on tv--I never wanted to be like her!
There's a whole world full of things to be interested in. Sometimes some of us (yes, like me!) need to give ourselves a little kick in the pants to get going and do things.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
