Retirement: Newly found time!

by Irwin Lengel
(Lakeland, FL)

How are you handling your newly found time?

The hardest part about getting old is realizing that we can no longer do the things we used to do or shall I say, not as quickly as we used to.

I can remember the times that I used to run up the stairs so that I might give my wife a kiss on the cheek upon returning home from work at the end of the day. Fortunately, nowadays, I no longer go to or return from the office, so all I need do is walk to the other room to kiss her on the cheek.

Although, truth be told, she would be the first one to indicate that while I no longer leave the house to go to work, there are many days she feels as though I have left for the office when I disappear within the confines of my office which also becomes the second bedroom of our home should a long-lost relative surprise us by asking to come spend a week or so with us. But, neither of us would have it any other way because now that we are retired we truly enjoy being together even if it means we are in separate rooms.

Gone are the days that I would leave the house at seven o’clock in the morning only to return at seven o’clock in the evening.

One of the nice things about retirement is, now that work isn’t in the way, we can find the time or shall I say make the time to enjoy the hobbies we didn’t have time to appreciate doing (or even knew existed when we were working – our line-dancing comes to mind).

I have to admit that I have found new interests since retirement as has my wife. One main hobby of mine is and has been the re-igniting my desire to write. Hers, I am pleased to say, is determining what part of this great big world of ours she would like me to take her to, preferably while we can still enjoy it. That is right! We are not getting any younger. For those of us still fortunate enough to have our health, our desire is to see as much as we can.

Before long, traveling around the country lugging that 45 – 50 pound suitcase is going to be too big of a challenge. While I do not contemplate it happening in the near future, I am sure the time may come that we will have to resolve ourselves to traveling the world by watching shows like National Geographic or Rick Steves travels in Europe. But until that time comes, we are hoping to give it our best shot.

What about you? Are the winds of change blowing stronger at this point in your life than they were, say, three or even five years ago?

While we would all like to hope our healthy years are going to last forever, lately time seems to fly by much quicker than expected. In our case, it is hard to believe that we have been retired fifteen and one-half years already. Boy, how time flies when you are having fun!

While I look forward to eventually slowing down a bit, right now is the only time in my life where I’ll have the joy of planning to do and see as much as we are physically capable of and I don’t want to miss one precious moment of it.

There is something special about this point in our lives. When we were younger, everything seemed to come with strings attached. When we wanted a new TV, - Oh, that means another bill! How are we going to pay for it? If we wanted to take a short vacation! Up pops the usual question. How are we going to find the time and money to do that?

We never seemed to have the time to actually sit down and think long and hard about some of the decisions that needed making. It was as though we had neither the time nor the money to really plan what we were going to do next. Subsequently, one day runs into the next, followed by the next and so forth and so on.

Stated differently, what has happened – happened. As luck would have it, most of what did happen involved the things we wanted to happen and everything worked out for the best.

Now, we have all the time in the world and there’s something particularly enjoyable about everything we plan on doing. Things like going to see a movie, visit one of our children, or just plain goof off playing at our computers like we are both doing at this moment.

When you get right down to it, there is something particularly enjoyable about every stage of life, whether we think back to our childhood, single adulthood, graduating high school and/or college, getting married and finally retirement.

Each and every phase of our lives has particular things about it that you will only have at that particular time in your life. Savor them. Enjoy them.

Most of all, keep seeking them out. It is special moments such as these that get us through each day and enable us to look towards tomorrow wondering what lies ahead!

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