Twenty Years is a Long Time
by Irwin Lengel
(Retirement Community)
Will Rogers once said, “Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.”
The average person has roughly 20 years of life remaining after retirement – time enough to write a masterpiece, run a marathon, or mentor hundreds of youth. There’s even time to do nothing, discover the beauty of grandkids, or rekindle the romance of a long relationship. Tomorrow can be the beginning of new adventures, new joys, and greater successes – how you spend it is up to you.
As evidenced by Will Rogers’ quote above, the average person has roughly 20 years of life remaining after retirement. We (Dolly and I) consider ourselves to be quite fortunate in that even though I was sort of down-sized into retirement back in 1996 - come December of this year we will be starting our second 20 years of retirement.
True, 20 years is time enough to write a masterpiece, run a marathon, or mentor hundreds of youth, and when I think back over these past 20 years, while I haven’t written a masterpiece, I have in fact written a book. And no, I am definitely not a runner but over the past 12 years my wife and I have become quite good at line dancing.
While I would not consider myself a mentor in the true sense of the word mentor, I did spend the first 10 years of my retirement teaching young insurance professionals about property and casualty insurance.
What have we done these past twenty years? We not only have discovered the beauty of grandkids, we also have discovered the beauty of great-grandkids. Having just celebrated 53 years of being married, one could say that we do take time out of our retired lives to rekindle the romance part of our marriage.
Fact of the matter is that even though we are retired twenty years this coming December, we still look forward to new adventures, new joys, and greater successes.
We are attempting to do something different this summer. We had hoped to be on the road most of the summer and the manner in which we are doing it (time-shares, relatives, hotels, and so forth) keeps me from the Internet as we either do not have Internet service at all, have to go to a place that offers free WiFi, or and this one just doesn’t sit well with me – pay for Wi-Fi on a daily or weekly basis.
So, my blog postings have gone from fairly active (on a weekly basis) to a hit or miss type situation, based on Internet access. And while I try my best to write often so that I can post weekly, due to our active lifestyle, this is not really an easy task.
Another realization that crosses my mind more often than not is that the true success of a blogger is providing content that his or her audience wants to read and come back to each and every week. While I admit that I do not have a true niche, wanting to share both informational and educational information about retirement in addition to funny anecdotes is probably the best niche I can muster at this point.
Having said that allow me to share with you some wild and crazy thoughts about retirement life:
I’m retired – I am going to live off my savings – what I am going to do next month is anybody’s guess!
Guess what, being the age we are we can wake up every day and spout off the following comments:
I don’t want to; I don’t have to; you can’t make me; why – because I’m retired
So let’s face it, now that we are retired, we have the time to enjoy life and all its little mysteries and happenings. Go to that afternoon matinee; spend time with the grandkids; relax and read that book; learn a new language; take up painting; go out on the town with friends.
We aren’t getting any younger and now that we have the time we do – we should use it wisely.
Until next time!
