Retirement

My retirement was forced upon me in 1998 when I got a heart virus. My wife didn't want me to die so I retired. However, 7 months later I recovered even though her mother and stepmother had by then died a within a month or two of each other and our 2nd child had  miscarried also during that time. So, in May of 1999 when my doctor told me, "We have figured out what was wrong with you finally. You had a heart virus and your heart has rebuilt itself so likely you could now live to 70 or 80 if you take care of yourself I was sort of blown out because I had already retired. I also knew that having a heart virus had harmed me some and I also knew something else was wrong with me that was then undiagnosed as well. But, it felt good to be free and not having to take medications all the time anymore. So, I felt sort of happy and confused at the same time at my predicament.

"The Good news was I was retired and the bad news was I was retired". If you are retired you know just how true this statement really is. If you can remember being a child and waiting to get out of school for summer vacation just imagine if that summer vacation never ended. At first you might love the time to spend with your family and friends, (if they had time to spend with you). And you might like not having to get up at 6 am or earlier anymore (so you wake up at 9 or 10 and you are all alone most of the day)

But then I remembered praying for the "Leisure to Practice" and it began to make some sense to me. I had begun praying in the early 1980s for the Leisure to Practice because I saw how useful it might be to myself and to everyone I knew to study, to research and to write about things that were important to me, and to pray and to travel the world and meet new people and visit friends all over as well. So, I realized God had granted my prayer for "Leisure to practice" to help myself and mankind to more wisdom and knowledge and to help myself and others to enlightenment." So, I looked forward then to this journey towards enlightenment and wisdom that I realized then that God had granted me.

Also, even though my heart virus had affected my health I could still hike, ski, ride bicycles or motorcycles and travel the world. The most dangerous thing for me to do was to go to sleep because then my feet might turn blue. The other dangerous thing for me to do was to get too stressed about anything. So, being aware of all of this I moved forwards in my life trying to remain as healthy, energetic, while exercising but always sort of as calm as I could be so I didn't stress myself too much so my health could remain stable for as long as possible. Then in 2006    I was finally diagnosed hypothyroid. This was a really important time for me when I discovered this and found Armour Thyroid which was then still made in the U.S. which made me feel like I was about 20 years old again in my mind again. This made me realize that I wasn't going to die in my early 60s like I had thought before. After this, making it to my 70s or even 80s or beyond began to seem feasible once again. So, what I'm trying to say is that "Retirement just like everything else in life you have to take one day at a time to make any sense of it." Trying to plan more than 1 year in advance when retired doesn't make much sense to me anymore. However, financially planning for 5, 10, 20 years or more might make sense, physical plans are less certain. So, as long as you have your will (as in a trust or something like that worked out and who your beneficiaries are if anything happens to you you are pretty free every day to do as you wish if you prepared financially to actually be retired.