Thank you to everyone who showed an interest in my previous post about my retirement planning process. Although I had been asked to write about it by a blog reader, I really wasn't sure if anyone else would be interested, especially since it all happened almost six years ago!
As I mentioned in the previous post, the major portion of my retirement planning focused on financial matters. However, once I had decided I was going to retire and people got to know about it, the number one question everyone asked was not if I could afford to retire, but, what was I going to do after I retired? What would I do with all my time? I really hadn't given it a lot of thought, until then, but, I had vague ideas of spending my time doing all the things that I didn't have enough time to do when I was working, such as my crafts projects (knitting, crocheting, quilting, etc.), gardening, getting the house organized, and just, plain relaxing!
But, people had other ideas! My doctor was concerned that I would spend too much time, sitting around. "Get a dog", she said, "You'll be forced to take it on daily walks". "No, thank you", I said, "The cat wouldn't like to have a dog around", but, I made a mental note to start walking on a more regular basis.
Friends and colleagues asked if I would travel. I gave that some consideration, but, I knew that I was a homebody and, in any case, I didn't want to travel on my own. Even if I were to go with a group of people, I would still have wanted to share the experience with my daughter and she was working full time.
My daughter was concerned that I would be lonely and bored by myself at home, because she knew what an introvert I was. So, I assured her that I would make it a point to interact with other people. It was then that I came up with a few things to do in retirement. I even made a time schedule to keep me on track! I still considered it as part of my overall monthly balanced life goals and added a sub-category, under Time Management, for Retirement Planning to make sure I submitted my retirement paperwork on time!
Here are some of the non-financial things I considered doing after retirement:
Spiritual: I planned to resume Friday night meditation sessions at the Temple and there were weekly services I could participate in if I wanted to. In addition, at the time, there were monthly prayer gatherings that I attended. At the beginning of retirement, I went to the Friday night meditation sessions two to three times a month.
House: I had many plans to deep clean, declutter, and organize the house in retirement! I would have all day to get the house as clean and tidy as I liked, without waiting until the weekend or find time after work. At the end of the first month, I had deep cleaned several rooms and had gathered 20 bags of decluttered items to donate.
Garden: I was going to get some long term gardening projects done after I retired, as I would have more time to garden. Some projects took longer than planned and some have not been done, yet, but, tending to the garden was definitely on my list of retirement activities.
Family and Friends: Again, I was going to get together more often with them and visit them, etc. I made it a point to visit relatives and to get together with friends. There were visits to some places of interest with my friend R who was one of the few friends who was free to go places and do things with me; we went out to lunch, we toured gardens and cultural monuments, we watched some movies at the library, etc. We had planned to do some other things, too, but, then, there was a pandemic and that put an end to those plans.
Community: I considered attending meditation sessions and participating in the temple activities as a community activity. Then there was blogging. In addition, I was participating in the American Heart Association's drive to raise awareness of congenital heart disease by knitting red hats for newborns. One of the new community activities I decided to participate in for additional social interaction was joining the weekly knitting club at the library. I attended it several times, although it didn't quite deliver the social interaction I was hoping to find, mostly because there was a language barrier between me and the other participants. I stopped attending it after a few months, but, at least I tried.
I had also considered becoming a volunteer, at the library or a museum. I went as far as to obtain the applications and then, decided it was not for me!
Leisure/Crafts/Hobbies/Me-Time: This was the area I had planned to do most in retirement! I had several crafts and hobbies I wanted to spend more time doing - knitting, crocheting, patchwork and quilting, sewing, scrapbooking, etc. I've always felt that I could spend the entire day working on my craft projects. Unfortunately, when I do that, I tend to neglect the other areas, such as house cleaning!
I had also wanted to resume piano lessons once I retired as now I'd have time to practice. I started taking piano lessons from my neighbor S and I enjoyed them, switching to online lessons once Covid hit, but, after some time, I found it hard to keep up with the lessons and it became more stressful than joyful, so I stopped.
Looking back, the biggest impact on my planned retirement activities was the Covid pandemic. I stopped going places and doing things that would require social interactions. I am not someone who needs to be constantly doing things or going places or being with others, in the first place, so I didn't feel like I missed out on anything (except, perhaps, grocery shopping in person!) I found plenty to do at home and enjoyed it.
More recently, I have started going to the library, have visited the temple, and visited family, but, I am not quite ready to be without a mask in public and prefer to keep my risk of exposure levels as low as I possibly can. I am constantly weighing the benefits of going out or doing something against the risks I take of getting ill, and usually, the risks outweigh the benefits, for me.
On the whole, I am enjoying being retired. I like being able to spend my days at home, doing mostly what I want to do, on my own schedule. It works for me.
But, yes, if anyone is considering retiring, ask yourself not only if you can afford to retire, but, what you plan to do after you retire.
