It has been five months since I worked my final day and entered the life of a retiree.
For the most part, I was ready to retire. There had been management changes I was not pleased with. Had it not been for that, I would have probably worked longer. But things happen, and it was time.
My biggest concern about retiring was not necessarily how I would fill my days, but how I would establish a routine. Although I do not have to follow a strict schedule, I function better having a bit of a plan, however casual that might be.
To help with this, I purchased a paper calendar, one that corresponds with the electronic one on my phone. I realize this makes me a bit of a Luddite, but I can live with that. I like looking at my weekly schedule laid out before me, and I see it better on roughly 8 by 11 paper.
My vision of retirement included volunteer work, maybe a part-time job, spending more time on writing and music, getting together with friends and, of course, spending time with family.
Here is how this has played out:
I generally get up between 5:30 and 6 a.m. which is no different from when I was working. If I happen to have allowed myself to stay up a little later the previous night, I might vary from this waking time, but in general, this is my practice.
I do some reading and devotional time between 6 and 7. Around 7 I either go for a walk or go to the gym (the county recreation center where I have a pass), or a combination of the two. When I go to the rec center, I engage in some stretching and stationary bike riding, all to continue to the rehabilitation of my knee.
I am usually back home around 9, and how I spend my days depends on what I have going on.
I am still singing in a community choir, which I love. We meet on Tuesday nights, so during the day Monday and Tuesday, I will spend some time looking at the music for our upcoming spring concert (May 2nd) and listening to recordings of the tenor part for each.
I enrolled in a couple of adult education classes, one of which was four in-person sessions that required nothing but going and listening for a couple of hours. This one, which pertained to government and the U.S. Constitution, is over.
The other one is much more intense, much like a college course (but without tests and writing papers). It's on Christian ethics and is 100 percent online. It goes for ten weeks, and we are about to wrap it up. It has been great.
I served for 16 years on the board of directors of a large Nashville non-profit, two years as board chair. I rolled off in 2020, but I still have a fondness for the organization and its mission, which is to help people through homelessness and addiction. The current president and CEO is retiring, and I have been asked to serve on the search committee for a new CEO. So far, those meetings have been online, but we will have some in-person interviews of candidates over the next couple of months.
I have a couple of other volunteer commitments, one with a local food bank and another with a non-profit dedicated to helping solve the worldwide water crisis.
I try to meet a friend for lunch once a week if it's feasible. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not. Also, Wife and I recently joined a book club, but it has been a challenge for us to get there. It meets Tuesday nights, the same night my choir practices, so I either have to miss that or book club. We are hoping, once we have established ourselves in the book club a little more, we might be able to persuade them to change the meeting night.
This past week I traveled to Montgomery, Alabama where I joined a group to visit the Legacy Sites, established by the Equal Justice Initiative, to call attention to the history of slavery and oppression of the Black race. It was a moving experience, and I'll write more about this soon on my Substack.
I wrote on my Substack about a trip Wife and I took in late February/early March to Florida for MLB spring training. We also spend a fair amount of time traveling to Atlanta, Huntsville and/or Birmingham to see the family. We have a trip to Seattle planned in early May, where we will meet Older Son and his family and he and I will go through the turnstile of our last major league park, a quest we began in 1994 when he was eight years old.
More to come on that. After baseball, Wife and I will take the opportunity to visit more of the Pacific Northwest, including Victoria, British Columbia and the Oregon coast.
On days when there might be a lull, I have no problem whatsoever reading whatever book I have going at the time. Reading during the day is a luxury I have looked forward to.
The part-time job has not materialized, but I have some thoughts and ideas after we return from Washington and Oregon in May.
All in all, retirement is going well for me, with just enough meaningful activity to keep me busy, but at a slower pace than when I was working. In addition to all I just described, there is always plenty to do around the house and I am slowly cleaning out the basement, purging as much as possible. I have also promised to refinish a china cabinet for Older Son and DIL. That will also a be a top priority after the May trip, unless I can squeeze it in prior to that.
Believe it or not, I do miss work sometimes. I mostly miss the people, but I also occasionally miss the intellectual stimulation. I will read something in the news about banking regulation and sense my pulse quickening a bit, only to remember this no longer involves me.
Then, I quickly realize that is mostly a good thing, as it is someone else's problem!
