If you’ve read my posts you know I have been retired a lot longer than one month. In fact I’ve been retired six years. One thing this gives me is a kind of perspective many of you do not yet have, because you have never experienced retirement. I remember six years ago being very uncertain about entering this new phase of life. What would I do with all that free time? Who would I be without the job? Would I get bored? Did I really have enough money?
Six years later none of those things cross my mind. I have plenty of enjoyable things to do. I’m still me, turns out I wasn’t my job after all. I was a real person with a real identity and I did not need paid work to have purpose. I’m rarely bored, much less often than I was bored at work. And I’ve got more money than I did six years ago, a lot more. That is all good news, and I hope it is good news to you if you are pondering any of those vexing questions as you consider your retirement.
Maybe the best way to describe what retirement is like is to just tell you what a month is like in our lives. I started to go day by day but came up against an immovable obstacle, my memory. I couldn’t remember what I did on a daily basis for more than maybe the last three days? It also was approaching War and Peace in length. War and Peace, for you young people, is one of the longest novels ever written. It used to be used as a metaphor for any overly verbose work of prose. But I digress. So rather than a chronological play by play here are some of the things that we have done, or will do, in February 2022.
We will alternate the cooking and everything involved in meal prep and clean up every week. So for two of the weeks, like this week, I’ll be responsible for the meal plan, grocery shopping, cooking and after meal clean up. This is harder than it sounds, because for over 40 years my wife has been doing all of that. She was a stay at home parent when we started having kids and she’s much more proficient at the whole cooking thing, plus, all that experience. But I’m getting better even though I have a long way to go. It is always fun on my weeks but it also consumes a lot of time, because I’m a slow cook and I’m usually experimenting with new recipes.
Three times most weeks we will run with our running group at 5:30AM. That means we get up at 4:50AM and get dressed and drive to the starting place. I know, we are retired and could run whenever we choose. But we’ve been part of this group for years and its a fun social time before, during and after the run so we just get up and go. Also the same three days we play two hours of pickleball with a totally different group of 20 pickleballers. All levels of skill and we are always recruiting new players. Generally I’ll also play tennis singles three or four times a week with my tennis buddy. We are pretty evenly matched and both pretty good players so it is a hard work out, harder than running or pickleball. My wife spends more time playing tennis than I, she is on the courts almost daily. She also walks with a non running friend almost every day as well as accompanies our 80 year old next door neighbor when she walks her dog.
One week in February, this last one, our son flew in from Virginia and we drove two hours to pick him up at the airport. He spent a few days with us and then took one of our cars to travel to north Arkansas to see some of his college friends. We met back up in the city and dropped him off at the airport and brought both cars back home. It was great seeing him, its hard to imagine this big muscled grown man, an engineer and now a medical doctor, used to be just a little boy running around our house. The whole week was kind of complicated because nine inches of snow and three inches of ice fell on our normally snow free state and we had to do a lot of driving through it. Also my wife had two medical procedures on her tennis hand in the middle of this winter storm and they kept cancelling and moving around her appointment times. We ended up spending three nights in a hotel to get that done but still got to see our son and he also got to see his friends.
Also in February, we have a week long trip planned to go hike Big Bend National Park in Southwest Texas. Its been on our list for a long time but it is usually hard to find lodging since there are no major towns in the area. We never plan well in advance but this time we lucked out and got reservations on both sides of the park for later this month. We’ll spend two days driving there and two days back with four nights at the park. We love hiking and there are hundreds of miles of hikes there as well as a lot of scenic drives.
In addition, an old ski buddy called up a few days ago and wants to schedule a couple of ski trips in February and March so I’m working on that. These would be guy trips without my wife, but we take separate trips frequently so that isn’t unusual for us. I hope that works out because I have not skied recently and I need the refresher. Plus this is a guy who used to work with me, he retired in his late 40’s and lives on a boat with his wife now that their kids are grown. Very cool guy who is fun to travel and ski with.
Also on tap for this month is a trip to North Arkansas to close on the 25 acres we are buying and to talk to contractors about building a cabin on it. I’m sure we will do some hiking while we are up there. We will probably both have some tennis team matches near the end of the month. For her it depends on her hand, she is going to hit tennis balls today so we’ll see how it does. By the end of the month it will also be time for spring fishing to start heating up. The biggest bass of the year are moving on to spawn beds and the action can border on insane if you catch it right.
On top of all that I have board meetings and committee meetings for the college board and foundation board I chair. Plus I have meetings set up for my volunteer industrial recruiting project, followed by more meetings I am sure. Most, if not all, of these will be virtual ones so I can fit them in without messing up my other plans.
If that sounds like a crowded schedule, it is, but it is mostly crowded with fun pursuits done with my friends and with my best friend, my wife. Unlike my former career there is next to no stress involved in these thing. At least, unless you count the stress of returning serve in a tiebreaker with your tennis teammates watching. Or the stress of a 15 mile day hike in the Texas high dessert. Or the stress of getting down the Birds of Prey at Breckenridge without cracking some aged ribs. All of that is good stress in my opinion, the feeling of being fully alive. It is going to be a very good month!
Does the thought of not having a job to occupy your time or to define who you are scare you just a little?
If you are retired have you found that most of the fears you had going in never materialized?
Do you find that the things you worried about before retirement, having enough money, having purpose and having enough social contact are no longer worries because you’ve got more than enough of all of them?
As always if you do not see a comment box just click on the title at the top of the post, and presto, it shall appear!
Wow, you two never sit still!
Like you, I’m enjoying retirement. For me, after the regimented working life of a teacher, the total freedom is particularly sweet.
Thanks for sharing Steve. I love hearing about what you guys get up to — I can see my wife and I having a similar “active leisure” lifestyle when we’re retired too!
Have a great week!!
Thanks Joel! I’m sure your retirement will be awesome and will start a lot sooner than mine did!
Steve,
I have a season ski pass yearly and the Birds of Prey race course is in Beaver Creek not Breckenridge. It always gives me anxiety to ski it top down. Only time I didn’t freak out was knee deep powder. Doesn’t watching the Olympians now make you want to fly down it? Love your active retirement and wish I had 1/10th the energy you do and I’m younger at 50. Kudos to you and keep it up! I want whatever you had for breakfast.
Thanks Denver. I always mix up my mountains. I can’t even remember where I skied up to the edge of a cliff, stopped, started talking to another skier then fell off the cliff backwards. You should have seen the look on her face! And on mine!
We visited Big Bend in January and loved it. Just like you, it was always difficult for us to find relatively close lodging (that didn’t involve camping). But we managed to find an Airbnb in Terlingua only about a week out of our trip. It was neat to see the contrast of the desert parts of the park and the mountainous parts. The park is huge – lots of driving though! Enjoy!
Dragon Guy
Hi Steve,
A suggestion that chronicling the purchase of the property, the design, and build of the cabin can provide great material for future posts.
Congrats on a great retirement.
Semper FI,
Luis
Hey, long time no see Luis! That’s a great idea, I’m going to steal it for certain. Hope all is going well for you friend.
Thank you for sharing, Steve. As I’ve shared on the MMM team site, I’m starting my 14 month of retirement and all is going well and about to get a lot better. After spending many years working in public education (in one way or another), I’m looking forward to finding our final home 🏡 in NW Arkansas, but I need some help —— do you mind, emailing me directly, so we can discuss some viable options for living quarters in that area. —- although I’m a former Razorback, I have not been back to NW Arkansas in many, many years, and I’ve never searched for a home up there. Since my retirement, my interest grows daily.
Keep doing well in retirement—- sounds like you guys have a strong and consistent approach!
Hey, my wife just found a great property. Maybe better than ours! I’ll get you the information.
Sounds great!! Thanks for getting us the information and a few pictures would be fantastic!
“I’m still me, turns out I wasn’t my job after all. I was a real person with a real identity and I did not need paid work to have purpose.” This, to my mind, is among the most important things anyone can come to understand. We get very confused in this culture, thinking that what we are is what we do and vice versa, and that is the cause of a lot of pain in life.. well said Steve..
Thanks Jack! It was a big concern of mine. My job had radically changed my self image but it turns out that not having the job did not change that new self image of confidence and optimism. Those were just features my job helped me grow, but take the job away and they still remain. I’m kind of embarrassed that I was ever afraid.
I’m not nearly as busy as you are since FIREing. Yet. But I am finding it surprising how easily the days fill themselves up, whether with errands, reading, biking/walking, or a million other random things. It’s fun watching things unfold.
Hey fifo, it is interesting isn’t it? I thought I had only one task today, to make a call to a consultant about a volunteer project I’m working on. But I also got a call from one of my lawyers wanting to use me as an expert witness so we had to work up some testimony and proof it a few times, lawyers are not good with math! And that took up most of the day. But even though it wasn’t planned it was fun.
That does sound like a crowded schedule! I’m sure you’ll enjoy every minute of it 🙂
It has been a fun week for sure Froogal, it is going to get a little hectic starting next week with closing on land, talking to builders, driving to Big Bend, hiking, then returning home to testify at a hearing and then hopefully headed out to ski. Plus a board meeting of our foundation. And I’m sure some volunteer work happening.