I retired a year or so after the movie, “About Schmidt” came out. Remember that? My sister had warned me it was not a very appealing look at retirement. I agreed.
My husband had retired before I did. He warned me retirement would not be easy. I disregarded that advice thinking that was easy for him to say. Wouldn’t it be great to have a stress-free life?
I discounted being bored. I retired anyway. I was bored at first. It took six months to a year to rewrite my life. One needs to fill in the time previously spent working. You need to find new friends. You need to establish routines. You need to fill the time with meaningful things.
New challenge; what to do when you have more time on your hands. It is leap year. We have an extra day in February this year. I already have that extra minute a week that Boniva saves so I don’t have to “set aside time” to take the weekly pill for osteoporosis. Now that big pizza chain is offering me “thirty minutes” to do what I want. The ads say if you order the pizza you have thirty minutes to do what you want before it arrives. On their commercials one guy spends his time getting “30 Minutes Abs”. Another couple contemplates romance. The commercials are a spin from the old days when they promised to get pizza to my house within thirty minutes or it was free. They no longer offer it free if it doesn’t arrive in thirty minutes. They offer me time. Maybe retirees aren’t their target audience. Maybe those thirty minutes are more precious to working parents and busier people. Wouldn’t it be nice if the OTD crowd could accumulate those minutes and add that on to our life expectancy?
My husband had retired before I did. He warned me retirement would not be easy. I disregarded that advice thinking that was easy for him to say. Wouldn’t it be great to have a stress-free life?
I discounted being bored. I retired anyway. I was bored at first. It took six months to a year to rewrite my life. One needs to fill in the time previously spent working. You need to find new friends. You need to establish routines. You need to fill the time with meaningful things.
New challenge; what to do when you have more time on your hands. It is leap year. We have an extra day in February this year. I already have that extra minute a week that Boniva saves so I don’t have to “set aside time” to take the weekly pill for osteoporosis. Now that big pizza chain is offering me “thirty minutes” to do what I want. The ads say if you order the pizza you have thirty minutes to do what you want before it arrives. On their commercials one guy spends his time getting “30 Minutes Abs”. Another couple contemplates romance. The commercials are a spin from the old days when they promised to get pizza to my house within thirty minutes or it was free. They no longer offer it free if it doesn’t arrive in thirty minutes. They offer me time. Maybe retirees aren’t their target audience. Maybe those thirty minutes are more precious to working parents and busier people. Wouldn’t it be nice if the OTD crowd could accumulate those minutes and add that on to our life expectancy?
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