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As far as retirement, I tried it after 24 years in uniform. At first, I liked it. I caught up on sleep, and I read a bunch of books and I hiked a lot. But then after a few weeks, I didn’t like retirement. It became boring, monotonous, unstructured, just a life adrift with no compass.
But once my second career is over for good, the real trouble begins. I will be back again where I was , just adrift. It’s scary to think about, but Father Time waits for no man.
I’d be interested to read about strategies one can use to overcome the monotony of retirement.
A lot of the articles I've read stress the importance of meaning, purpose, and accomplishment in one's life once work no longer supplies this; they are vital to those of us who are not content just piddling around or even having barrels of fun in Facebook-worthy recreational pursuits. See: Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Some find this in identifying and devoting themselves to a cause to which they can commit themselves fully and about which they care passionately, striving and achieving and feeling they're accomplishing something important. Not everyone is lucky enough to find such a venture. Structure and a schedule are also said to be helpful but, again, I think, for some people, this needs to be about something "real" that actually matters; not arbitrary.
While I don't have direct reports, my work includes making important decisions. Yet, I still see it as a means to an end...to generate income. That's it. No self worth or identity from it or attached to it.
I have a great life outside of work. That's where I find my identity and self worth.
Again, you may not realize the role your work plays in your "identity and self-worth" until it's gone which, for you, is years away (as you've said elsewhere). You don't know what you don't know until you know it and should perhaps bear that in mind.
Again, you may not realize the role your work plays in your "identity and self-worth" until it's gone which, for you, is years away (as you've said elsewhere). You don't know what you don't know until you know it and should perhaps bear that in mind.
My identity and self worth were never about work. That could not be more true in retirement. I worked in a highly technical field. Now my identity and accomplishments are about photography and my painting. Even then my art is personal and I barely care what others think of it.
My identity and self worth were never about work. That could not be more true in retirement. I worked in a highly technical field. Now my identity and accomplishments are about photography and my painting. Even then my art is personal and I barely care what others think of it.
That's great; I'm happy for you. The difference being that you're actually retired.
Before you even retired, you had your post in April that you weren't thrilled to be retiring. Was it because of all the frustration at the lack of flexibility for WFH options in your place of work? Because of the suddenness?
Some of your posts have seemed to mention humidity and your discomfort with it. Also doesn't seem like you are in love w/ some of your neighbors, yard work, and having excess stuff. Are all these things weighing you down? Can you make changes?
I was definitely being drawn into a dark hole with my various struggles. I wouldn't advocate changing every aspect of your life as I did; in some aspects, I did throw the baby out with the bathwater. But I at the time, I wasn't capable of making nuanced decisions. So getting up and walking away from my prior life worked for me.
You have certainly done your research on me...
Yes, I do think some of my difficulty has to do with the way I retired instead of merely the retirement itself. That's why I say I'm suffering from post-traumatic retirement stress disorder rather than simple retirement depression (which, again, is common -- just not on CD); it's sort of a "complicated bereavement," as it were.
And yes, I do plan to make life changes. Sometimes the baby needs to be thrown out with the bathwater!
In the aerospace community there was a famous chart, attributed to Boeing HR (likely apocryphal), plotting age of retirement, vs. years of life in retirement. The snide undercurrent was that Boeing wanted to save on defined-benefit pension costs, so it actively lobbied engineers to retire later. Why? The chart says, that if you retire at 55, you're likely to live something like 20 more years. That's 20 years of pension-collection. If you retire at 60, that's 10 more years of expected life, halving the company pension-costs. And if you retire at 65, you're looking at just 2 years of life expectancy. I may have botched the numbers, but the gist was that delaying retirement is a huge cut in life-expectancy, and hence a huge boon to the company's bottom-line.
The lesson is that from the employee's viewpoint, it's better to retire early, even if plans are inchoate and attitudes are, so to speak, in flux. That however does not diminish the very real personal anguish of entering retirement, or even contemplating the entrance into retirement, without the requisite psychological preparation.
Interesting. Thanks for the background.
I wonder if the Social Security Administration has a copy of the same study that's why they put the FRA at 67?
A lot of the articles I've read stress the importance of meaning, purpose, and accomplishment in one's life once work no longer supplies this; they are vital to those of us who are not content just piddling around or even having barrels of fun in Facebook-worthy recreational pursuits. See: Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Some find this in identifying and devoting themselves to a cause to which they can commit themselves fully and about which they care passionately, striving and achieving and feeling they're accomplishing something important. Not everyone is lucky enough to find such a venture. Structure and a schedule are also said to be helpful but, again, I think, for some people, this needs to be about something "real" that actually matters; not arbitrary.
I think you hit the nail on the head with this!!!
This is exactly why I recommend some soul searching for anyone approaching retirement. Retirement is the opportunity to do new things without the restrictions of working, commuting and being beat up in the workplace. For some people it might be some big cause. Personally I had a enough of causes, enough of looking out for others. Retirement is the time for myself, for developing my artistic abilities, for learning and personal growth, for travel and exploring, for some long neglected hobbies, for a better, healthier lifestyle.
I know a lot of people who are successful in approaching and living in retirement. Many of them have their greatest accomplishments when retired. I also know others who seem depressed and lost and just waste their remaining time. I try to avoid being around those people. As you point out many of them had little self direction before retirement and where mainly at a basic Maslow level of dealing with the basics of living.
I know this article is talking about executives, but I think it applies to any working person regardless of their level. The psychology is all the same.
I mentioned this before but I think a lot of people who struggle with retirement are those whose lives were defined by their jobs. That is, their whole working life was structured to the day to day environment of their jobs, the people they work with, so on. As such they got their sense of worth and purpose from what they did,
For those in higher management positions, there's another aspect to it as the article mentions. Your career was one of being in positions of power, power over subordinates and the power to make huge decisions that can impact the company. When you give that up, you feel lost and empty.
For myself, I am the complete opposite as my life was never defined by my jobs. I can look back and be happy that I did a lot of meaningful work that impacted a lot of lives for the better. But, my sense of self worth was never tied to my career. It was just a means to an end of eventually not ever having to work the daily 9-5 grind again. The pandemic only reaffirmed that, I was perfectly happy being at home doing nothing, just relaxing watching TV, surfing the internet, cooking, working out, just being free and without stress. I'll never feel a need to get a part time job or whatever as some would do to alleviate the boredom.
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