Thursday, December 29, 2011

Rethinking this retirement thing....

Right now we have only one custom home under construction (pre-sold, thank goodness), completion expected within a month.  Tuesday morning the wood floor finishing crew started the sanding / scraping / staining / polyurethaning process, and will finish by the middle of next week.  In the meantime no one else can be in there with them as too many people stir up dust, which settles on their still-wet floor and ruins the finish.  This means I have to stay away, too.  What I'm getting at is I have no where to go all day, and nothing to do.  This week has become a sort of retirement trial run.  I don't like it.


I was home Tuesday morning before lunch.  After about half an hour I was bored, so I went to the grocery store and bought the fixin's for banana pudding and came home and made that.  Then I saw that K had some sweet potatoes out, so I went ahead and baked them.  And I cooked some pasta, too.  Then I went out and started my running program.  Later I read for a while, then watched a Big Bang Theory marathon.  And then I was bored again.


Yesterday wasn't much better.  I washed and dried and put away a load of clothes, and even ironed 5 of K's business-style blouses.  (My jeans and T-shirts are all "wash and wear", regardless of what the label says.)  Then I was bored again, so I went to a local park / nature preserve and walked about 3 miles.  I saw one bird.  Apparently everything else was either taking a nap or was nocturnal, or discreetly sized me up as not worth attacking.  I stopped on my way back at Starbucks where I sipped a latte and read my Kindle....until I got bored.  


When I do retire for real I'm going to have to either get a part-time job or do some volunteer work.  I never thought of myself as being overly active, but I guess I am.  


Are you retired?  If so, how do you spend your time on an average day?  I'll need some pointers.


S

4 comments:

  1. I swim in the mornings at our local public pool, and I spend far too much time blogging. When I'm not blogging I work on my novels, which I think are pretty good but not good enough to capture the attention of an agent. Most of my jobs over the years have required me to work independently so being in an empty house (Sue still works) isn't so bad. Of course you could visit Portland after you retire and I'll show you around.

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  2. I would have a problem with it because so much of my social life is tangled up with my work life. It would all end at once and I'd go out of my mind without some structure.

    I work with volunteers who are managing it well and they stay very busy. It seems like they have things lined up almost every day of the week. I try to watch and learn.

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  3. I'm retired and I spend an overly inordinate amount of time surfing the net. And reading. And watching movies from Netflix. And cleaning up after the three cats. And occasionally cooking and/or baking. I never seem to have enough time to do it all.

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  4. I'm long away from retirement, but when we moved to Florida about 4 1/2 years ago and I had to leave my former job, I thought it would be nice to "take a little break" between jobs. It didn't last long - after the boxes were unpacked, I got bored and lonely. I found another job really fast.

    I could see working a part-time job in retirement. My in-laws have been retired for a long time; they are so busy they can't remember how they had time to work.

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