Retirement: New Routines

by Louisect

If you miss routine, make your own new routine.

For instance, there is this guy in my town who used to work for the Post Office. Anytime I go to a certain diner at a certain time I see him there having breakfast and reading the newspaper.

You could do the same thing or maybe make a list of diners in a 20 mile radius and go to a different one every day. Get yourself a journal and write in it what time you got there, what you ordered, the service your received, how much it all cost and how you liked it.

After breakfast you could find the second activity of the day. Go to the library and find an interesting book and read two or three chapters and stop to write in your journal your feeling about what you just read. Are the characters believable, is the book exciting, what do you find interesting or boring about the book.

Maybe your next activity could be a brisk walk at a park. Get one of those step counters and try to increase steps each day. Record your results in your journal. Tell your journal what you saw on your walk, the temperature. How you felt when the walk was over. What your goals are for the next walk. To increase steps by how many.

Buy yourself a hobby kit. Like Jewelry making, knitting, a large puzzle, play solitaire (cards). Record in your journal what you accomplished, what you plan to do next.

I read about this old guy who makes these knitted caps on a 'hobby' round loom. It is a simple process of placing loop over loop with a hook. Of course this old guy is in his late 80's so not so simple when you get up in years. He donates the caps. He feels he is giving back.

I have not actually journaled but I used to work in a research lab and we kept 'lab books' to explain our work, experimental set ups and our results. I used to get a kick out of reading something I wrote 5 years earlier. It all came back clear as the day I wrote it.

You could write a book. It could be on anything. Let's say you like to bake and you have some good recipes. Make those recipes and record all measurements of flour, eggs, and whatever else goes in your cake. Decorate it, take pictures and make sure you bake that cake in the same manner about 10 times to 'know' your product and to ensure it will come out the same way each time. It would be a lot of work to make each product a bunch of times. It could be fun too!

You could invent something. Have you ever used an item and said to yourself, if this thing had a handle or the on off switch in a better location, this thing would be better?

If you know how to do something clever, write an instruction manual. Let's say you are good at cleaning your house in 2 hours. You could write a manual on what cleaning products to have, what kind of bottles to fill with the cleaning products, what kind of cloths to use. Types of vacuum cleaners you use and why. Tell your method of where you start and why and your procedures. Continue to explain what is the next room you move onto. This is just an example of something a person might do well and take for granted but others could use some help in.

Take some courses on Udemy or Ed2Go. On Udemy, you can teach courses too if you have an expertise.

Good luck!

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