Seven years into retirement, my best advice for soon-to-be retirees would be ‘know yourself’. People often say that once we hit a certain age, we stop caring what other people think. That’s probably because, generally speaking, when we reach a certain age we know who we are, so what others think about us no longer makes us doubt ourselves. The more you know yourself, the less you look to others to tell you who you are.
By the time we retire, we should, in theory, be pretty self-aware, but if you’ve been busy raising a family and building a career, you may not have had time to figure out what you’d do with your spare time if you happened to come across some. It’s getting to know yourself in a whole new context.
How much social time vs alone time vs couple time do you need? Do you like to get out of the house regularly or are you more of a homebody? Do you prefer a busy, organized schedule or are you more of a laid-back, take things as they come, kind of person? Are you naturally active or will you need to schedule ‘forced active time’ to stay healthy? Do you already have interests / hobbies / a sense of purpose or will you have to work at finding that in retirement?
Many couples retire having rarely spent large quantities of unstructured time together, so you have to know yourselves as a couple as well. Some do a lot of activities together and others spend most of their time apart. Both can work well as long as you’re on the same page. Ray and I have different interests so we often do separate activities during the day, but we meet up at the same time every morning for caffeine and chat time to make sure we stay connected. We also do many of our social activities as a couple and, boring as it may sound, we quite enjoy our evening Netflix routine.
I’ve met retirees across the spectrum – the super busy ones, the ones who golf 300 days a year, the ones who continue to work part-time (not for financial reasons), the constant travellers, the snowbirds, the grandkid sitters, the fitness freaks, and so on. Some of the lifestyles I don’t envy, but everyone seems perfectly happy with their choices. Knowing yourself is key. What works for one person won’t work for the next.
What worked for me this week was boating, bagels and butterflies.
In our third and final dragon boat festival of the year, I was shocked to see my name on the list for the final race. Everyone was guaranteed to be in two of the three heats, but only the top 20 (of 30) were selected for the final. Having come close to quitting after the first festival, it was great to experience the rewards of sticking it out.
We won all three of our heats so we were in the A Division finals against Kingston and Belleville. We were more than a boat-length ahead when, about two-thirds of the way through the race, the steer (who is very experienced) somehow lost control of the boat and we veered off course and had to stop. It was a disappointing end to the day, but we were happy with how we’d performed overall.
Ray has progressed from pizza to wood-fired bagels (made from scratch). Very tasty. Pizza and bagels. It’s going to be a fattening fall around here.
We went to a Monarch butterfly tagging event at Presqu’ile. This guy has been tagging and releasing Monarchs here for forty years. He tagged the butterfly that holds the Guinness world record for the longest insect migration (estimated at 4,635 km). Monarchs rely on milkweed for their survival so we bought some milkweed seeds while we were there.
That blog was bang-on about retirement. I feel fortunate that, so far, I seemed to have very easily glided into it, however, I imagine there are many stages.
I’m going to forward it to a few friends that are having some challenges making the switch.
Auntie Rose here (as, for some reason, always appears as anonymous 🤔)
yes…an accurate account of retirement….so varied. Well done, in the 🐲🛶 …and interesting info about the Monarchs! Xo