Month One

With my first month of retirement now complete, it's worth reviewing how it went. Did I enjoy it, was it harder than I thought and do I regret it? Read on to find out.

The first thing that jumped out when I looked back at September, was just how long a month it seemed to be. It really seems ages ago that I was logging off for the last time and I think one reason for that is the number of things that have happened since. Retiring is naturally a very big event in anyone's timeline, but I also had COVID for the first time and 10 days later - just as I tested negative - the Queen died.

With all that going on, retirement activities only really started halfway through the month once we returned from a week's holiday in Yorkshire. Until then I hadn't really had time to consider whether I'd accepted that I was now retired. It was only while driving home that it suddenly occurred to me that I wasn't going back to work on Monday, or ever again, and I noticed that it was a happy feeling.

Making Time

The old proverb variety is the spice of life means that you can make life more interesting by doing a wide range of things. In my experience, variety also affects the speed at which time appears to pass. Before retiring, weeks and months seemed to fly by because they were just repeating patterns of work Monday to Friday, and two days of weekend chores. You were continually looking forward to the next holiday (public or personal) as a break from that repetition, even if it wasn't to go away from home.

I noticed years ago that holidays always seem to last longer when you spend time in different places. Stay in one location, going to the beach every day and the trip will be over before you know it. Travel around a little and time will expand to make the break feel longer. The most memorable holidays I've had are those where we've seen a lot of different sights from one day to the next. It's one of the reasons we've been on a lot of cruise holidays but always avoid the 're-positioning' cruises which are cheaper but have lots of sea days that quickly become repetitive.

The same has applied this month. I've tried to make each day as varied as possible, for example instead of spending the whole day clearing overgrown sections of the garden, I've done that for several hours, sometimes in the morning, sometimes afternoon and then got on with something else.

Routines are great for building good habits and making sure important things get done on time, but make sure variety forms an equal part of your life.

Health

As I talked about in a previous post, my mental health suffered at the beginning of the month but has been good since our trip to Yorkshire. I saw a meme on Facebook recently that was a picture of a person sitting next to a tree, with the caption "Me and my therapist". Being out in green spaces definitely benefits my mood and is why the Dales is one of my favourite places.

Giving up work has also been good for my general demeanor - I've been a lot less irritable, stressed or pissed off.

Since coming home we've been lucky with the weather so I've been able to spend a lot of time in the garden, unusually for October. Not sitting around sipping Pimms (I wish!), in fact a lot of heavy lifting and digging but with plenty of fresh air. This has benefited my physical well-being too as I've noticed that I'm a lot more flexible and looser from moving around and not sitting down much.

Occupation

If there was one piece of advice I received most often from retired people, it was to make sure I had one or more projects. In other words, to make sure I was working towards some kind of purpose. My project this month has been to get as much of the work required in the garden completed before the weather changes, but I've got indoor projects lined up for when that happens. One useful trick I've found is to maintain the monthly/weekly/daily To Do lists that I've used at work for many years; not just to focus on priorities but also to look back and see what you've achieved.

I had 24 tasks on my Master To Do List at the beginning of September and only 4 of them rolled forward to October. If I'd only been able to do them at weekends it would have taken months to achieve the same results, so it feels good to be productive but also relaxed.

Hobbies

In August I signed up for Draw Awesome - I know, terrible name - as I've found Phil Davies to be a good instructor on other art sites. It's a year long course with weekly lessons and a different medium each month. The first month was graphite pencil and September was charcoal, which is incredibly messy but quite good fun. The perfectionist in me will never love anything I've created but I had low expectations for charcoal so was pleasantly surprised with my creations.

The pencil section was interesting but drawing still life subjects reminded me too much of school art lessons with my nemesis 'Piggy' Dixon, every week a bowl of bloody fruit or some flowers. The pinnacle of his input to the proceedings was "mix it boy, mix it" in reference to the awful powder paint we had to use to ruin our drawings. In the second year I was lucky enough to have lessons on the one day a week that Linda Sutton, an artist in her own right, took classes. She gave me an A+ with the comment "excellent in every way". She encouraged me to continue past O and A levels and aim for the Royal College of Art, where she had studied. Unfortunately she left at the end of that term and a couple of years later Piggy sabotaged my mock 'O' Level exam. But that's another story.

Next up is pen & ink, which is much more to my tastes.

So in summary, the month got off to a bad start but the last few weeks have been really good. I've not been bored or lacked for things to do, I feel better physically and mentally and have plenty of interesting projects to look forward to.

I do miss the interaction with people, particularly the daily standup calls I used to have with my team, so it's not quite Deep Joy yet (if you know, you know) but at least I'm no longer being ironic when I say it!