The problem is that retiring might not work for Workaholics who have to be busy all the time. So, retirement for some workaholics might just be a death sentence for them.
My father retired in 1980 and was gone by 1985 when he was 69 years old. So, he obviously was a workaholic who likely shouldn't have retired or at least started another business or something just for his retirement. I don't think he realized just what a people person he was so when he retired I think he was just too isolated out on his Desert 2 1/2 acres to make this work for him.
However, for me, My life has always been about family. What I did for a living like owning businesses I only did to support my family. It's not that I didn't enjoy owning businesses it's just that wasn't my focus. My focus was always making sure my family had a roof over their heads and had food to eat. So, in this sense owning a business was so my family would be okay.
It really in some ways was never about me at all it was about others (Making money). I didn't really ever care about myself in this sense only my family.
So, for me, I still had my family when I was forced to retire at age 50 with a heart virus. I was told by doctors that if I didn't retire then I was going to die soon. So, in the fall of 1998 I retired rather than die.
By May of 1999 I had recovered from my heart virus unlike most people who died of heart viruses then. most people didn't even find out they had heart viruses until after they were already dead in a post mortem. I was really sort of no different except that I didn't die so as a process of elimination my heart specialist knew I had had a heart virus. But he said I was very lucky because most people die when they have this sort of heart virus. Also, my dermatologist didn't want me to see him again because I reminded him of his 29 year old cousin who died of a heart virus. So, I had to get another dermatologist to make sure I didn't die from skin cancer because I had spent my life as a surfer, sun bather, skier and I had worked a lot in construction with my shirt off with my father too in the 1960s in Los Angeles county.
So, it still took me 5 years to feel comfortable being retired.
Accepting that you are retired is the most helpful.
So, you sort of give off always: "I'm retired and I like it!"
This works best in public discourse to where people will say: "Gee. I wish I was retired." And then I usually tell them "OH. It actually takes about 5 years to get used to".
And that's only IF you are NOT a workaholic to begin with.
Often if workaholics force themselves to retire they either eat or drink themselves to death with alcohol within those 5 years.
So, in order to make retirement work you need self discipline. I think the kind of self discipline you need in raising kids successfully actually helps the best in retirement.
Instead of disciplining your children to survive in this world you discipline yourself so you can survive retirement.
What is retirement actually like?
It's like being a child and your Christmas or Easter or Summer Vacation never ends.
Sometimes this is more wonderful than anything else you have experienced in your life.
But, also, sometimes it can be so boring you might not want to live another day.
So, being a self starter not an alcoholic or food addict or drug addict helps a lot in surviving your retirement.
So, if you are retiring have fun but remember when you have fun all the time there might also come days when you feel a little bored.
One of the best things I did is I started blogging in June of 1999 and I have had at least one website that I blogged on ever since.
The one you are reading now I didn't start until 2007 and the one before this I started in June of 1999 and was called geocities.com. Then Yahoo bought geocities so I bought a yahoo business site for a lot of my longer writings called dragonofcompassion.com which I have had since around 2008 or 2010 somewhere in there.
Though I have tried to start other websites I find my intuitivefred888 site suits me best for writing because of the Compose autoencoder so I don't have to program everything in HTML (Hypertext markup language" like I did my geocities.com website from 1999 until 2007 when I started intuitivefred888 here.
So, finding a discipline you can live with is important whether that is jogging or riding a bicycle or reading or writing or art or whatever works for you is important to be able to successfully retire.
Good Luck!
By God's Grace
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