I’m coming up on my eight-year retirement anniversary. Knowing what I know now, would I do anything different?
Hard to say. What I know now isn’t any better than what I knew then. I just have more time to ruminate on it. Occasionally I wonder if I have it in me to work again. Part of me says yes. I’m certainly capable, and I wouldn’t mind putting on real clothes, but I don’t see how I could sustain my lifestyle.
Unless I have a tee time, it takes me a couple of hours to get going in the morning. I revel in the slow start. Breakfast, coffee, news, constitutionals, puzzles. Of course, it takes time to get my blood pressure back to normal after reading the paper, so there’s that.
Although I was minimally fit during my working years, I’m in way better shape now. But it’s a commitment, and I find it easier to stick with the program when I don’t have to make decisions that interfere with happy hour.
I try to get all my exercise in before lunch because … well, lunch.
Dinner is just one more meal away. It creeps up fast, and you’ve got to be ready. I like to be involved in that whole business. I suppose my husband, Dale, could go back to being the primary for meal planning, but the older he gets, the more he eats like a 10-year-old boy. The man needs supervision.
It’s true I’ve gotten a little older in eight years. Haven’t we all? It now takes a village to maintain my aesthetic standards. Facials, massages, pedicures, haircuts. While I would have benefitted from all that when I was working … looking sharp for all those high-level personal interactions … there was no time for such indulgences. In my career, they didn’t hand out prizes for most chilled.
Now I have the time, except these days I’m talking to the cat. And seriously, he’s not interested in anything I have to say. Unless I’m coated in kibble, I don’t think he cares what I look like. It’s just me and the mirror. My steady date.
Finally, there’s the problem of my inside voice. As it is with so many retirees, what used to be my inside voice is now my outside voice, and it does not always reveal my best side. However, I think it’s like toothpaste. No going back.
All in all, I don’t see how it would be possible to go back to work. Which means I will continue to focus on the simple pleasures of retirement, which is my favorite job so far.
Donna Pekar is an aging badass (for real) who lives in California and writes Retirement Confidential.
