Dear LPG

As I approached official pensioner status, I realised that reaching out to family members who have already gone through this stage can provide valuable insight into what lies ahead.  The financial, health and social implications will kick in soon enough, but many of us miss one more underlying problem, primarily if we must address all this while living alone.  Many readers of LPG have passed the retirement milestone, so they know how difficult it can be at first; however, after the euphoria of the honeymoon period, most of us eventually adapt. But do we really, and does adapting mean accepting and tolerating the inevitable?

Now that my family has grown up and left, and I don’t have to go to work every day, the fast pace that I didn’t even realise I was used to living life at has slowed down.  My weekends have not changed much after a year of retirement, but the weeks seem endless. 

I can remember that, at first, I cherished the weekends because I could still do the things I used to, such as meet up with my still-working friends after a day of cleaning up and shopping. But it is only a short time before the weekdays and weekend days merge to become an indistinguishable progression, and you get up each morning having trouble remembering exactly what day of the week it is.   

During so many years of working, weekends were when I got to do all those things that get neglected around the house because of life's 9 to 5 demands before slowing down to indulge in some relaxation.  But the reality is that, sooner than we think, many find that retirement can give us so much relaxation time that we can get bored.   It is often the case that we have more than enough to do, but with no one watching and so many relatively empty tomorrows on the horizon, that sense of relative urgency gets lost along the way.  

The answer is setting personal target dates and cutting off points to achieve those goals while ensuring they are sufficient to keep striving for.  It is all about balance, but there has to be a balance between the ones you allow yourself to miss and how many times you let that happen.

When I was working, a tick-list was my way of keeping up with my achievements and seeing my success. When I retired, it was one of those things I thought I would never need again, but seeing those ticks accumulate on the page makes a difference. So, my tick-list is alive and kicking again.  

I thought this was a personal problem until I found myself part of a conversation in which quite a few other people told a similar story. I then perceived it as a national problem. Having found a lot more internet information on the subject with American origins, it must be a common retirement problem in the Western world. 

The internet has also taught me that there is a big difference between tolerating life and embracing it. We need to work out our perception of positive life satisfaction as our priority, and whatever it is, we need to review it every time our circumstances change…  

YA, Bellingham

YA, she shares what she found online…

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