Your Retirement Stories - Part Two

Following up on a reader's suggestion a month or so, I posed some questions about retirement from your perspective. Some of the ways we approach this time of life were shared in Part Two of this series. To continue here are Elle's remaining answers and a response from Marian that is well worth reading.

What did you think about old age as a youth, and how do you feel about it now?  

One birthday when I was 5 I asked Dad how old he was.  He explained that when you hit 29 you start going backwards (so he was just 13 that year).  So age was a non-subject in my life except when I was a teen and I was embarrassed at how old my folks were compared to my contemporaries nearly all of whom were 1^st born to 19-21yo parents.  Dad is just 2y younger than hubsters’ grandmother.  Combine this with the early demise of my folks, age is a non-issue.  I’m grateful for every single day and year.  Each day is a new life-courtesy of my Native American Medicine Woman’s counseling.  

What wisdom has come to you in your advancing years?

Cherish the moments.  Let go of the crap (this is a daily effort).  Life is not a competition.  Don’t worry about the Jones-you’re not even on their minds. 

What do you miss about your career? 

SOME of the people.   also have come to miss the journals after 3.5 years.  I don’t know what’s going on in medical research and advances anymore.  I need to find that avenue without having to subscribe to all those expensive journals again. 

Did you have a career that was very satisfying and fulfilling? If you could do it all over again would you pick a different career path?

YES YES YES!  NO NO NO!  I was born to make a living in the operating room.  It was challenging, fast paced and fulfilling to be part of improving health and saving lives of the traumatically injured.  As well, sitting with the family of someone we couldn’t save and giving them respectful time alone before taking their loved one to the morgue.  I worked with some turd surgeons but a big majority were wonderful.  They taught me so much more than I was required to know.  I will ever be grateful for those 4 decades of my life.

 

Marian responded with her answer to this question: What do you miss about your career?  

Great question because I think most people have some aspects of their career that they miss.  It would be sad to work in a career for most of your life and not have anything you miss from it. 

 I worked in multiple areas during my career as a registered nurse.  Prior to retiring I was the director of the Nursing Division at our community college.   I miss the interesting interactions with people, the problem solving and frankly, being the “go to” person (sometimes I hated that as well.)  

I think it is really important to identify what you miss in your career, so that you can plan a way to fulfil some of that in retirement.  For instance, I increased my time with friends once I retired because I knew I would miss the social interaction of work.  

I am doing plenty of problem solving by learning new hobbies, such as blogging and using my Cricut machine.  Being the boss and “go to” person is not going so well…people don’t seem to appreciate that quality in retirement.  Go figure.  

Thank you to both Ellen and Marian for sharing their insights about life and retirement. For the third installment of this post, I will share more responses from readers to these questions.

I hope we can learn a little something from others in order to make our own retirement journey the very special time it is.