I now know what my father meant! (depression, retirees, psycho)
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My father, who died at 80 still working, told me to retire as soon as I can, don't kill myself working. I retired at 58 and now at 65, while not exactly loving where I live, love the fact I can do whatever I want without some moron yelling at me, people watching every single thing I do, or someone trying to kill me. If I want to watch SpongeBob all day I can, if I want to trout fish I can, have a beer at lunch I can, take 3 hours staring at a cloud or afternoon storm I can. Retirement is great, I highly recommend it.
Repped!
Exactly.....owning your day is priceless!
Someone said boring people lead boring lives.......are there boring days in retirement, yeah...but, I'd rather be bored in retirement than bored at a job I'm stuck at when I no longer needed to be there. The commute, stress and daily "when will it end?" watching the clock (12 hr days - plus pretty much when working those type of hours it was get home, eat, sleep and unable to do anything) was not only depressing but unhealthy. Not only that, no time really to routinely exercise which I now have and keeps me in much better shape than when I worked.
I realize I'm in a much better position than others since I have a gov't pension but "going to work" just to have something to do or get out of the house is just sad. If one needs to the money or absolutely loves their job then I can see it but a large number of people just stay working because they buy into the "work or die" delusion put out there.....then they work to an old age and die soon afterwards anyhow.
Many of us spend most of our adult lives sitting in a job just to collect a paycheck without deriving much joy out of our profession.
We then build up retirement as our time to shine and enjoy what years remain. The only problem is that retirement in and of itself does not solve for what has been missing through out our professional lives.
The real solution to the problem was presented years earlier we just never realized it at the time.
[Most of you spent].... most of our adult lives sitting in a job just to collect[ing] a paycheck without deriving much joy out of [y]our profession.
What if your job wasn't sitting at a desk? What if your job was working with people, and accomplishing many things every day? What if the decisions you made every day helped many many people? What if the programs that you initiated helped many many people?
What if your profession was actually a joy, and you only left when the Federal Government got involved and forced you to do meaningless things day in day out for the last 5 years, but for 28 out of 33 years, your job was an exciting joy?
What if you had to power to do what worked and the power to tell your boss how to assist him/her with her job to make it more effective?
For a person like this, retirement is a serious loss. This person is me.
I have money, and finances aren't an issue, and I have plenty to do to keep me "busy". But none of the excitement of the job that I had for the first 26 of 33 years exists anymore. Being "busy" is not quality of life compared to what it was when I was working. And at my age that job is no longer available to me even if I wanted it back, since I have passed the mandatory retirement age for it, let alone the fact that if I hadn't passed the age I would need to go back to school for about 15 credits.
I think that 95% of the people here are the people who sat at a desk for 40 years under the thumb of a tyrannical and stupid boss, and who actions in the world or work hardly accomplished anything. For them, the freedom of retirement is everything.
Go back and re-read your OP where you said your father talked about ......"a boring life ".. and you stating you now know what he meant.
Maybe re-read it before you talk about people not understanding you and your contradicting of your own OP !
That's what I took it to mean. Was his father bored or just dissatisfied with his life?
I can also understand what the OP is saying about not being bored but at the same time also being dissatisfied with a new and different life. I don't know, but I would guess adjustments need to be made so retirement can bring the same satisfaction as life before retirement. I do know you can't go back again.
What if your profession was actually a joy, and you only left when the Federal Government got involved and forced you to do meaningless things day in day out for the last 5 years, but for 28 out of 33 years, your job was an exciting joy?
What if you had to power to do what worked and the power to tell your boss how to assist him/her with her job to make it more effective?
For a person like this, retirement is a serious loss. This person is me.
I think that 95% of the people here are the people who sat at a desk for 40 years under the thumb of a tyrannical and stupid boss, and who actions in the world or work hardly accomplished anything. For them, the freedom of retirement is everything.
I belong to the other 5%.
Slyfox, with this post of yours I finally 'got it' as you say. But the 'it', I believe, is nothing so lofty as an existential crisis. It is that you have/have had way too narrow of a definition of usefulness/accomplishment/joy. You seem similar to the 3-yr-old who wants ice cream, but there is none. He is offered cookies, brownies, cake, pie - but NO, it's only the ICE CREAM he wants and nothing else is going to suffice.
So really, I think it comes down to whether you are going to accept the wonderful desserts that life CAN offer you, or are you going to continue to insist you cannot be happy without the one thing it CANNOT offer you?
What if your job wasn't sitting at a desk? What if your job was working with people, and accomplishing many things every day? What if the decisions you made every day helped many many people? What if the programs that you initiated helped many many people?
What if your profession was actually a joy, and you only left when the Federal Government got involved and forced you to do meaningless things day in day out for the last 5 years, but for 28 out of 33 years, your job was an exciting joy?
What if you had to power to do what worked and the power to tell your boss how to assist him/her with her job to make it more effective?
For a person like this, retirement is a serious loss. This person is me.
I have money, and finances aren't an issue, and I have plenty to do to keep me "busy". But none of the excitement of the job that I had for the first 26 of 33 years exists anymore. Being "busy" is not quality of life compared to what it was when I was working. And at my age that job is no longer available to me even if I wanted it back, since I have passed the mandatory retirement age for it, let alone the fact that if I hadn't passed the age I would need to go back to school for about 15 credits.
I think that 95% of the people here are the people who sat at a desk for 40 years under the thumb of a tyrannical and stupid boss, and who actions in the world or work hardly accomplished anything. For them, the freedom of retirement is everything.
I belong to the other 5%.
I had a wonderful job with the government that provided intense personal satisfaction, as well as a lot of travel to some rather nice locations. I personally helped people and made changes to rules and systems that helped other people. I got to advise Admirals and Colonels and develop personal relationships with them that were rewarding, both monetarily and emotionally. I still remember one particular Colonel and JAG officer with particular fondness for our great conversations, not all of which had to do with cases at hand. I only retired because our command was disestablished and I didn't see the point of commuting 5 hours round trip daily to DC, even for a GS-14. So believe me, you're not unique.
Heck, I went through several years of taking care of people after I retired: first, my husband until his death, and then helping out my Mom until her death. I was running a small antiques business during the latter time, but after 3+ years it got to be frustrating dealing with chintzy customers and I shut it down. That, plus not having Mom to look out for anymore, really left me with a hole in my life. To be honest, I went through kind of a 2 year slump, which was obliterated this fall when I took the Master Gardener course. Since gardening was already a passion, this has given me a new outlet and friends, which I sorely lack in my small isolated community.
Occasionally I will help out a friend with a small investigation for free, but that's the extent to which I practice my old profession. That aspect was only one part of my work life anyway and so is no longer a driving force in my life. I've set new goals for myself, such as getting my 90 year old garage totally restored before I'm 70; getting my lakeside lot landscaped; and restoring and selling all the leftover antiques from my old business (and those I still can't resist buying ). No, these aren't life-changing goals, but they feed MY passion for renewal and restoration, so they're what work for me.
Slyfox, with this post of yours I finally 'got it' as you say. But the 'it', I believe, is nothing so lofty as an existential crisis. It is that you have/have had way too narrow of a definition of usefulness/accomplishment/joy. You seem similar to the 3-yr-old who wants ice cream, but there is none. He is offered cookies, brownies, cake, pie - but NO, it's only the ICE CREAM he wants and nothing else is going to suffice.
So really, I think it comes down to whether you are going to accept the wonderful desserts that life CAN offer you, or are you going to continue to insist you cannot be happy without the one thing it CANNOT offer you?
OH Golly... I have done that already. I am not in need of armchair psychological analysis. But thanks for your attempts. It is possible to have to re-align your life, and I have done that. However, 40 years of practice is very very difficult to adjust in a few short years, while struggling with declining health, and other issues of age.
As I said before, I have an extensive existential online counseling service that I do free for people around the world and which takes up about 10-12 hours per week.
I have not demanded only one flavor of ice cream as you suggest. That would be stupid since the neither the ice cream store nor the flavor exists anymore.
I start a new Senior College course in a few weeks on Estate Planning, and am planning to visit my children in April (about 1000 miles away along with my grand son).
I do not have a narrow view of joy.
Transitions can be hard particularly if they are dramatically different. You do know this, right? My original point was to encourage discussions about this, and that has happened.
Occasionally I will help out a friend with a small investigation for free, but that's the extent to which I practice my old profession. That aspect was only one part of my work life anyway and so is no longer a driving force in my life. I've set new goals for myself, such as getting my 90 year old garage totally restored before I'm 70; getting my lakeside lot landscaped; and restoring and selling all the leftover antiques from my old business (and those I still can't resist buying ). No, these aren't life-changing goals, but they feed MY passion for renewal and restoration, so they're what work for me.
Thanks for a wonderful and positive reply to your experience of the same kind of alienation. And thanks for not using the time to insult me because I struggle with it.
That's what I took it to mean. Was his father bored or just dissatisfied with his life?
I can also understand what the OP is saying about not being bored but at the same time also being dissatisfied with a new and different life. I don't know, but I would guess adjustments need to be made so retirement can bring the same satisfaction as life before retirement. I do know you can't go back again.
My father was very very busy in retirement. But I've discovered that busyness is not the same as fulfilling. My father was also a nut case with a number of serious disorders not the least of which might have been an undiagnosed case of borderline personality disorder.
I'm quite busy, but haven't been able to translate the fulfillment of my working life into something of the same in retirement. Not the least of which is that fact that I struggle with the age problem where people feel that old people don't know anything because they are clearly feeble. And the situation where volunteer positions are limited to grunt work that a 4th grader could do. I also live in an area where all the high level work jobs are taken since the population is small. So unless I moved, those kinds of jobs don't exist for me here. The benefits of a highly scientific community(two major laboratories and a college) doesn't help in that while I have a Master's Degree, nearly all of the high level volunteer positions go to those with a PHD. Every third person here has one. It makes for some really interesting and entertaining things to do, but not a lot of options in participating in the doing.
You win some, you lose some! Life!
As to making the adjustments before you retire....there is really no way to do that. I did the best I could. I moved to a place where there is an active Senior College. I moved to a place where the number of retirees is great, and so there are a lot of people here who are near my age, but not many baby boomers yet. I moved to a place which had many of the things I wished that I had where I lived before. The feeling of alienation didn't happen initially. Its something that has only happened over the past year or so of my six years of retirement.
I have another friend here who is experiencing it also. No matter what I want to do, or try to re-arrange, at age 68 I cannot compete with people who are 28, and the problem is that except for my body, I am still 28 in my mind. I have not accepted that I am elderly now, and as I get older and older I'm discovering its something that constrains me from being the 28 year old that I am inside.
I'm like that Movie BIG with Tom Hanks. I would have to say that 99% of the people that I know are 68 or older. They are definitely not 28 year olds in 68 year old bodies(with the exception of one who is 90 and is actually 22 years old).
Last edited by slyfox2; 02-17-2017 at 10:50 AM..
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). No, these aren't life-changing goals, but they feed MY passion for renewal and restoration, so they're what work for me.
