I opened the latest Time Magazine with the President of Starbucks on the cover and inside the first page was an add from Bank of America saying this title.
I made me think of a conversation that Jennifer Lawrence and David Letterman were having about this when he said, "I had a couple of weeks off lately and I found myself watching "Ellen". That didn't feel right. I don't want to be doing that every day." And Jennifer Lawrence said, "Don't retire. Just keep doing this until you die!"
It was at that moment that I realized both of them are "Workaholics". Workaholics tend to get crazy or die pretty soon after they retire. Because they just aren't built for retiring.
My own Dad was a workaholic too. He was a very smart man but to keep his mind busy he always needed to be working. So, he was looking forward to retiring a lot. But, then when he retired he only lasted about 5 years time. One of the last few years of his life he talked about a road runner (a desert bird) like "Wily Coyote and Road Runner" in the cartoons.
He said he let a road runner live in his workshop and raise her babies there but then he said, "When all the babies grew up and went away the road runner looked at him and made a plaintive cry of loneliness." He looked at me and I got the story at the time but I didn't get how he felt until now when my youngest child went off to college last fall.
So, even though I was forced to retire when I almost died of a Heart virus for about 8 months in order to stay alive in 1998, it still took me 5 years to adjust. One of the ways it helped me to adjust was I also started writing a blog at Yahoo GeoCities (doesn't exist anymore) and then in 2007 I began this blog at intuitivefred888.
Both these blog sites (they didn't call them that in 1999 yet either) have been helpful in making more sense of my "retired life".
Some people like myself are okay with retirement. Other people just get sort of crazy in one way or another and die within 5 years or so.
Even now I'm having a really tough time with all my kids living so far away (1000 to 2000 or more miles away from California in college, or working and raising their families.
My family has always been very adventurous so it isn't surprising to me now that my children are adventurous to like I have always been.
But now, after raising children non stop since 1974 when I was 26 I'm finding it very difficult to adjust not to retirement but to ALL my kids being so far away.
I suppose the worst potential outcome for someone who was both a workaholic and really attached to their role as a parent would be to be a single parent without a lot of friends who had to retire the same summer that their child went away to college in the fall.
That might be really difficult to psychologically and physically survive.
But, it's possible!
You just have to learn to adapt to a new situation just like you had to once adapt to being 18 and on your own or going off to college and then meeting someone, having a child, and adapting to all that.
Once again you have to learn to change as much as you did then to actually adapt to retirement and to be relatively happy.
Imagine a summer vacation that never ends. That's just about what retirement is.
What retired people say is this: "The good thing is I'm retired and the bad thing is I'm retired!"
Being retired is likely the best thing and the worst thing that ever will happen to you!
So, you might as well enjoy it! (and make the best of it!).
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