Once a week on a Tuesday I’m going to tell you about my retirement experiences. Don’t be fooled by the somewhat bucolic title there’s a lot of stuff going off even if most of it is in my head.
What better week to launch my new and exciting blog than in the week shortly after reports in the newspapers the headlines of which were Will my ‘have it all generation’ really be so lucky in the end? It said – baby boomers face a lonely future. This alarming prose was occasioned by a report recently published entitled Who will love me when I’m 64? Coincidentally my age exactly – ooer missus! The report said many of us are ill-prepared for the significant transitions that ageing brings – retirement, loss of income, loss of status, ill health and here was me thinking there might be problems ahead but everything would be fine because I was born in that most advantageous year 1948. It seems this retirement business is going to be more of a challenge than I thought. Better get down to it.
The bald facts of the matter are that I’m going to retire in just over a month. You probably didn’t know that or even care. I’m a control freak and you probably didn’t know that either. I’ve been thinking about what I want my world to be like – we control freaks think in those terms – what I want it to be. Problem is I haven’t much in the way of an idea what I want ‘it’ to be. When you tell people you’re going to retire their immediate and, I suppose, predictable response is – what are you going to do?
How many times can you shrug and say – no idea – yet – I’m working on it? And I am working on it and that’s what I’m sharing with you via this blog. It’s my attempt to move beyond or at least personalise the obvious of self help books of which there are many but they haven’t helped me.
So I need to be creative, think laterally, work out what works. Important when, like me, you have no passion, no firm hobby to fall back on or extend. What shall be new and given that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for fuck’s sake come up with something exciting and I don’t mean bungy jumping type exciting. That’s way too obvious and, I’ve heard, dangerous. No point working all these years and then realising you’ve made a terrible mistake as the rope snaps. Fuck you think – briefly – I didn’t need such a big pension pot, but thank God my wife will….. splat.
So this is my challenge and the challenge of this blog to report my progress from said summerhouse. Hope you find it interesting.
PS if you haven’t worked this out, there will be swearing.