"Retiring" last April was not difficult. Already drawing social security, I mostly just quit my part time job to slope off to Alaska for the summer to toil at a wilderness lodge. Still, using the word "retired" embarrassed me in a vague way. After all I would still be working. Why did I feel as if I needed to apologize? A small voice inside--the voice that's wiser than the walking-around me--verbally elbowed me. "Duh. Look under Hint! You live in a world that identifies you by your job."
So the summer is over now. I'm back from Alaska; I'm back from the week-long volunteer trip to the Gulf Coast. Now what? Financially, I'm OK. I'm not rolling in money, but I can live on a combination of Social Security, 403(b), and (very) occasional employment. And careful budgeting. No, what's got me stalled is what this "retirement" is going to look like. In addition to the re-entry shock of returning to an urban environment after four months spent off the grid at the end of a 90-mile long dirt road, I'm faced with the fact that my schedule and task list is no longer set by an employer. For, golly, the last 26 years, I've shown up on time, I've done the work, and I've gone home. All of a sudden (another "Duh!" moment, here) I've got to decide what the schedule looks like, what my task list will be.
Advice abounds. Friends recommend books the titles of which I've forgotten in their proliferation. Other friends say, "Just do what you like doing, and the shape of your days will evolve." Yeah, well, what I really like doing is reading crime novels and eating M&M's. The only evolution there is the speed with which my sitzmark will expand.
You can only whine and fret so long before your friends quit talking to you. You have to do the planning, and the best way to do it is to start small. (You realize this is the small, wiser-than-me voice talking, right?) If you read my other blog, the one from the summer, you'll remember that I live to make lists. Shoot, by now you're probably shouting at me "make a bleeping list!"
So I started. Remembering the financial part I mentioned earlier, I redid my budget, this time figuring percentages:
- Apartment rent. Totally too high. Solution? In two weeks, I move down to the third floor to a cheaper apartment. Still steep-ish, but I'm not prepared to move away from this particular corner of urban Milwaukee because I love the proximity to movies, bookstores, and OK, the restaurants, which leads me to item #2 on the percentage list.
- Yes, Starbucks is right there, a block away; yes, the restaurant that lets me sit and read over, and after, a meal is a mere 20-minute walk from my kitchen. But unless I redefine my visits to be "treats" instead of substitutes for my own culinary efforts...well, difficulty lurks. Solution? I bought a bag of my favorite Star$$ Pike Place Roast Decaf, and I. Ground. The. Beans. Right. Away. No excuses. Make the coffee the night before, set the timer on the coffee maker. And I bought a yogurt maker. Now I have my very own home-made lowfat unsweetened yogurt at breakfast. Yes, I'm still working on lunchtime choices. Rome wasn't built in a day.
Moving to the meat of the matter, The Schedule (these are already solutions, which sounds remarkable pro-activer for the hand-wringing me):
- Having told my former employer I'm available for part-part-time work, I have Thursday afternoons in November taken care of. It's minimum wage, but I don't do much. It's income, it's activity out of the house with folks I know and like, and--most importantly--it's work. A job description. Defined tasks.
- "Retired" means free time. Habitat for Humanity needs help as the weather chills down and the work goes inside. Wednesday the local Presbyterians gather to build; someone is there to point me toward what they need. This, too, is activity out of the house with folks I know and like, and--most importantly--it's service. Defined tasks focused on someone/something other than me.
- But "retired" can also make your brain itch. To scratch it, I've gone back to involvement with Common Ground, the community activist organization I did some writing for last year. The newly reorganized Communications Team meets this Friday.
Well! That's my start on "retirement." Not what I imagine the remainder of my life will look like, but right now it works. And it still leaves me time to knit, to sew...and to read crime novels although I'm not eating M&M's right now. Fitness is high on that list.
Maybe if I mix in some pecans....
