Celebrate Everything in Retirement

The one thing I realized when I retired from Corporate America was that I was going to celebrate everything in Retirement.  Everything!  My time was now my own and I didn’t have anymore meetings, conference calls, memos to write or annual reviews to do.  I could do absolutely anything that I wanted, and I could do it whenever I wanted to do it.  It was absolutely liberating.  For forty plus years I woke up to an alarm clock and started a day of work that I never looked forward to.  I was grateful to always have a job and the people I worked with were nice and I fully understood that the problem was me.  I was the one who was being difficult.  I just didn’t want to work.  I didn't want to listen to other people tell me what to do.  It was my problem, and I knew it!  But it didn’t change anything.  I looked forward to the day that my time was my own and I finally got there.

I was determined to celebrate everything in retirement.

Retirement has been a dream come true for me, and I am determined to celebrate everything in retirement and make the most of every day.  So far, I have been able to do it with the help of the saint that I married fifty years ago.  She has been very patient as she listened to me complain about a job I hated for over four decades.  I had many different jobs because of promotions and transfers but I disliked every one of them.  I fully realized that I may be unusual in this regard.  Many people like going to work.  Many people enjoy what they do to earn a paycheck, and I am very happy for them.  I was not one of them and I have no one to blame but myself because I never knew what I wanted to do for a living.  I know what I want to do in retirement, and I have enjoyed every minute of it and it’s why I started this website.  I am intrigued by all the different people I meet and all the different hobbies and interests that they have.  I have many of those same interests and, deep down, I guess I thought of my job as an obstacle to enjoying them.  There was always something that I would rather be doing.

One of the things I do in the morning is to look up the date in history and see what happened.  Quite often, it leads me on a journey to research some details or read about some person that I never knew too much about.  It has led me to believe that every life should be celebrated.  A well written biography is more appealing to me than a page-turning novel and the lives that some people have lived are so astounding that you would have trouble believing it if you read about it in a novel.  These people should be celebrated in some way and when you come to appreciate how history has unfolded, it makes you appreciate your own life and how you got to this place in your own journey.  You start to think of all the little decisions that you made that steered you on your path to this point in your life.  It has gotten me to realize that you should celebrate everything in retirement.  Celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, good meals with friends and all the people that are part of your life.

You should celebrate retirement.  Celebrate who you are and all the interests that you have.  Try writing your memoir.  You’ll realize all the turns your life took and all the things you have in your life to be grateful for.  There’s never been anyone like you before.  Let that statement sink in and ponder it for a while because of all the billions of people who ever ivied, there has never been another you.  Celebrate that fact.  In fact, celebrate everything in retirement because life is worth celebrating.  I have trouble understanding how anyone can say that they’re bored in retirement.  There are too many things to learn and experience to ever be bored.  Try that simple exercise of checking out what happened on this date in history and do a little research on something that catches your attention.  Look at an event in ancient history and start to appreciate the geniuses who came before us to get us to this point in history.  We think we’re so smart in this day and age but spend some time looking at what the ancient Romans accomplished or the native people who walked the earth thousands of years ago.  They made monumental strides long before electricity and, in some cases, without mastering the written word.

The wonders of history and of the world we live in have allowed me to appreciate everything as a gift that we are privileged to enjoy.  Yes, my working career in Corporate America was a gift that I did not enjoy at the time but do appreciate for what it has given me to build the life I have today.  I have learned to celebrate everything in retirement and invite you to do the same.  It’s time to Enjoy Retired Life!

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