Retirement: A Full-Time Job

Calling All Retirees

 (Photo details:  Relaxing in the back garden with a glass of wine is certainly one of the benefits of retirement, but you'll need more than that for a happy retirement.)

(Caution: This is a post about retirement.  If you came here for politics I’m sorry to disappoint you.)

 

Yesterday Walter left a comment on my post:

Unfortunately, I am one of those who retired from something, not to something. I was a high level state government administrator and my work was my identity and passion. I retired almost three years ago. Not being a hobby or volunteer guy, I ended up taking a new job after one year. I am now a minion and work 40 hours per week hating my job. But if I quit, I know what the year without working was like. I am lost, unhappy, and looking for suggestions. I just don’t want the cookie cutter ideas of get a hobby, learn to play an instrument, learn a new language, volunteer. My finances are good, my health, except for my frame of mind, is good, but I regret the day I retired and there is no do over and I hate my current job–not challenging, engaging, etc. Is there a retirement to enjoy just relaxing? Suggestions please!!!

In my post yesterday, I wrote that I didn’t think I was alone in feeling the way I do.  I don’t think Walter is alone in feeling the way he feels either.  So I thought I’d put the question out to you.  Fellow retirees who maybe struggled with the same feelings as Walter and came out the other side.

He’s hit on a truth, that we need to feel challenged, engaged, and I also think valued.  I have gotten those things over the eight years of my retirement from blogging, my stint at a part-time job, volunteer work, time spent with friends and family, community college classes, traveling, and now piano.  But Walter needs some more ideas.  Walter needs a project that engages his intellect and passion.  I think I can safely say that a retirement spent just relaxing is not going to cut it.

You, my dear readers, have amazed me with your contributions on issues large and small over the years.  I have a feeling some of you might be able to help Walter like you’ve helped me over the years.  Any ideas?

Related Posts:   

    Why Retirement Won't Make You Happy

    Are You a Failure at Retirement?

    How to Recapture Your Retirement High

 

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Why I Would Rather Be Retired Than Run for President

(Photo Details:  My kitty.  Why? Because she is so cute.)

Here’s a little story.

I graduated from U.C. Santa Barbara with a degree in Business Economics with an Accounting emphasis.  I went to work after college for a “Big 8” accounting firm.  Four years later, after earning my CPA license, I left public accounting to work as the Controller of a venture capital firm.  Several years later, I was promoted to CFO.  And after 18 years of working there, I retired.  Some other facts:

1) When I retired, the guy who replaced me was offered a salary and bonus package that was almost 50% higher than mine.  His bio read much like mine, same college, same major, same Big 8 experience, same venture capital experience.  Except that he graduated a year after I did.

2) Every CFO before me and every CFO after me, was invited to attend in the weekly partner meetings.  I was not.

3) Every CFO before and after me was a man.

But I did very well at this firm, amassing enough money to retire at the age of 44. 

So that’s one story.  Here’s another one. 

When I started my career, I worked in the tax division of a Big 8 accounting firm.  Every so often, a partner would take each of us to lunch.  A “mentoring” lunch where they would share their wisdom on how we could be successful.  One such time, I scored a big “win,” the head of the tax division was my lunch-time mentor.  He spent most of the lunch telling me about how he had the great advantage of looking old when he was younger.  Because he was prematurely gray or prematurely bald or something like that.  I forget, it was so irrelevant to my situation.  He attributed much of his success to this.  

He told me I looked very young so the wisdom he passed along to me was, “Maybe don’t smile so much.”

These are just two of my stories.  Maybe you have some stories too.

While apparently, I smile too much, Hillary Clinton smiles to little.  She’s not relatable, she’s shrill, she doesn’t have the right experience.  Oh yeah, and she doesn’t laugh right.  When I watched the debates on Monday night, I actually yelled expletives not fit to print at the TV when Donald Trump would not stop talking over Hillary Clinton.  I’ve been there too. 

I am not trying to persuade you to vote one way or the other.  You already know how you are voting.  I just wanted to write a post about how this election is making me feel.  I wasn’t even going to write about it but I read these articles today and I wanted to share them, in case you’ve been there too.

Hillary Clinton Will Not Be Manterrupted  (New York Times)

Hillary Clinton’s Everywoman Moment  (New York Times)

Women do ask for pay raises, they just don’t get them (CNN Money)

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Postcard from Retirement

(Photo Details:  The relaxing part of our bike trip in Indonesia on the island of Lombok-May 2016)

It’s always hard to write a post after such a long absence.   Even when I’m not blogging, I think about blogging all the time.  Both for the writing part and for the interaction part--I always miss the interaction part the most.

But there are only so many hours in a day, even when you are retired!  So I just thought I’d send you a little postcard from retirement to tell you that I miss you, and let you know what I’ve been up to.  You already know that I haven’t been blogging (other than just thinking about blogging, which I guess doesn’t really count.)

Piano

As many of you know, learning to play jazz piano was something I had always pictured doing when I retired.  I didn’t get around to starting until five years into my retirement.  Better late than never, right?  But I’m deep into it now.  Besides taking weekly private lessons, I am now taking a jazz piano class at the community college.  We meet three days a week for an hour.  With practice and an hour commute each way to school, I’m as busy with this as I was when I had a part-time job a few years ago!

On the first day of class last week, our teacher told us about four different levels of learning piano.  Actually, this is probably true with any new skill: 

-First you don’t know how much you don’t know.  That’s the Unconscious Incompetence stage.

-Next you start to learn and you realize how much you don’t know.  That’s the Conscious Incompetence stage.

-I’m beginning to gain competence (finally after three years of lessons!)  So I’m in the Conscious Competence stage.  It takes a lot of concentration and practice for me to play right now.  It doesn’t really come naturally or easily, it’s still very hard work to play what I want to be playing.

-The final stage, she told us, is the Unconscious Competence stage.  Where you can access all your knowledge basically unconsciously--with ease.

Of course one student asked how long until we get to that stage, and our professor said 10,000 hours.  We all know about that 10,000 hours thing, right?

So I calculated that if I could practice 20 hours per week, I could get there in 10 years.  Even though I’m retired, I don’t think I can manage that, 10 hours a week is probably even ambitious.   At that rate, if I stick with it, I’ll be really great by the time I’m 72 years old.  Probably too old to start touring, but maybe some time during the next 20 years I’ll at least get to the point where I can play for people without shaking.  Currently there are only four people I can play for without shaking—the teacher I’ve had for the last three years, my husband, and my parents.  And I have to play in front of the entire piano class for the mid-term and final.  So it would be nice to at least make a little progress on that stage-fright thing.

Family Tree

A few months ago, after my Uncle Jim died, I spent a weekend reading through a bunch of personal letters and work memos that Jim had saved over the years.  The best stash was a box of letters he had written to his best friend over 40 years.  His friend’s daughter returned the letters to my uncle after her own father died.  I learned so much, in my uncle’s own words, about his life.   I only wish he were still here so I could ask him some questions!

After I did that, I decided to attack another box of memorabilia that my dad had given me awhile back.  This box was filled with letters, photos, and other items my mother had saved.  (For those of you who are new to my blog, my mother died when I was 16.) 

In this box I found some paperwork about her own adoption.  She was adopted as a baby, and when I was a teenager, she had thought about trying to find her birth mother.   Something that wasn’t as easy back then.   Ultimately, my mom was too afraid to contact her mother.  She wasn’t sure what kind of response she would get, and she didn’t think she could face it if it wasn’t a happy reunion. 

But with the internet, I found my biological grandmother in about 10 minutes.  Unfortunately, she died a couple of years before my mom did.  So I contacted her daughter--my mother’s half-sister.  In spite of the pretty great shock, my newfound aunt and cousins have been very welcoming and are interested in getting to know each other better.  This is the beginning of an exciting chapter for me!

Politics

And finally, I wouldn’t be totally honest if I didn’t tell you I waste an incredible amount of time each day following the presidential election.  Yes, time I could be blogging, or working on that 10,000 hours of piano practice.  Time that would be much more well spent in any number of ways.  But I can’t help myself.  It is the most interesting race I’ve ever watched.  I’ll leave it at that.

Thanks to all of you who have sent me so many nice emails lately!

Related Posts:

 How to Get Nothing Done in Retirement

How to be Lazy Without Even Trying

How Much Time is Too Much Time to Waste?

 

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