This is the time of year when I would usually be returning to work full time. In my first blog post, ”Is it the Beginning or the End”? , I mentioned that I was retiring after working 37.2 years at the same job. The reason I mentioned the .2 is that in some ways that .2 was the hardest and longest stretch of all.
Making the final decision to retire, realizing there was no turning back, saying goodbye to the people who had played such a huge part in my life for so long and stepping out into the unknown was stressful. This is the first September in fifty years that I haven’t started school full time as a student or as an employee. I feel like an escapee going uptown in the middle of the day when I would usually be at work.
Out of habit, I feel like I should go shopping and get a new outfit for the first day of school, maybe I will anyway.
Every year for fifty years I faithfully had my school picture taken and those lovely photos were dutifully distributed across the country to family and friends. Now I am thinking holy cow there are a lot of old unflattering pictures of me floating around out there somewhere.
I recently read an article about the things you should do when you are newly retired. Two things caught my attention; the first item was "get a job". I was like “say what”!!
The second thing was to take a gap year - now I liked the sound of that much better than thing number one. Take a gap year to decompress and decide how to optimize your retirement.
If students fresh out of high school can take a gap year to find themselves; why can’t new retirees do the same? The notion of taking a gap year is no longer just reserved for the young; it is apparently becoming the next big thing for retirees.
The only problem I see with this scenario is that people my age would go looking to find themselves and forget what they went for!
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