Too Busy to be Bored

One of the questions I was asked when I said I was retiring was “Won’t you be bored?” The answer at the time was a slightly cautious “No, I don’t think so…I hope not!” The answer now is a definite “No! I’m too busy to be bored!”

Sometimes I think retirees fall into one of two categories – those who are bored out of their brains, and either go back to work, or fall into a decline (sometimes, sadly, they die before they realise); and those who are busy enough that they think “how on earth did I fit going to work into my life?”

Luckily, I’m one of the busy ones. I can’t imagine going back to work. I did try it for a short time, as I was missing some of the things I got out of work, but I found that it interfered too much with my other activities. My coming out of retirement didn’t last all that long.

Let’s take yesterday as an example. After some chores in the morning (I don’t count these as part of my activities, as they are necessary whether you are retired or not), I finished the crochet part of a top that I’m making.

 

All I have to do now is weave in the ends, and it will be ready to wear. Mind you, I’m not ready to wear it, as it has turned out to be a bit small (I’m new to crochet, so didn’t properly work out what size I needed to make). Luckily I’m in the process of getting healthier, so losing weight is part of the plan anyway.

Once I’d done that, I got stuck into making a birthday card for a dear friend. I make pretty much all my own cards now – I enjoy making them and tend to collect bits and pieces of tools, equipment, paper, cardstock, decorations etc (some bought new, some acquired from people who no longer use them, some improvised from other things), so it’s not a cost saving exercise, by any means!

Then I thought I’d do my exercise for the day (as I said, I’m trying to get healthier). Since it was Tuesday, it was my Strength andFlexibility day (I do it every 2^nd day), going along to the podcast from the UK National Health Service. It’s a good podcast to start out with (I need something to tell me what to do, otherwise I don’t work myself hard enough), but I’m going to try to find something a bit more challenging.



some shorts I made for when I'm doing my exercises

I’m also doing the C25K program, also using the NHS podcast. I do it every 2^nd day also. I’m on Week 4, and have been for 2 weeks! I’m finding it quite challenging, so won’t be looking for a different podcast. There are a zillion podcasts for this program out there but the hard part is finding one that has music that I want to listen to (I’m not into that techno-crap).

So I get home from my exercise, and decide that I want to try to knit another dishcloth. I’ve already knitted a few, using the WaffleWeave pattern from Deb at Homespun Living, but wanted to expand my knitting repertoire, and saw her lovely Baby Fan Dishcloth pattern. If you haven’t cottoned on (pun intended) to homemade dishcloths yet, give them a go. They are lovely and soft, yet still clean the dishes really well. So easy to wash (throw them into the washing machine), so you don’t just throw them out like you would the ones you buy from the supermarket.

In between all that, I found time to do a couple of Sudoku (I have to keep my brain working!), catch up on my internet reading, research some books I want to get out of the library, annoy the cat (I have the scratches to prove it).

So, no, I’m not bored. In fact, the challenge is in choosing which of the many things I want to do that I’ll actually get to each day.

A truly joyful retirement!

Early, But Still Late

I was never a career-driven person. In fact, I was never a driven person in any way. I kind of just floated along, getting where I got to by accident rather than design. I admire people who have a passion in life and really work to make their lives what they want them to be. But I never really had that passion – maybe I never really knew what I wanted my life to be.

One thing I do remember wanting when I was younger, was to be retired by the time I was 40. Mind you, I was probably 21 at the time, and thought 40 was really, really old. I also thought that 40 was a long way off, so I had plenty of time to make that happen. How wrong was I!!



gum blossoms at our accommodation on a recent short break



Before I knew it, I was 40 and I hadn’t done anything to try to make retirement happen early. Where did all those years go? Oh, yes, I was living them! And what had I thought retirement was? All I was thinking of was that I didn’t want to be heading off to a 9-to-5 job in the City, that was taking up valuable hours when I could be doing the things I wanted to do, at the pace I wanted to do them.

For the record, I was just 50 when I retired. So even though it is later than I had thought when I was 21, it is still quite early. I’m hoping that I have many years left to enjoy this life – this joyful retirement!

I am really enjoying retirement. In a way, I think it is a good thing that I wasn’t able to retire at 40, because I don’t think I was ready for it then. I hadn’t done the financial preparation, certainly. But I also hadn’t done the mental preparation. And retiring without having done that would have been a disaster.

When you retire, you have to be prepared for a lot of changes. Suddenly a large part of your life is not there anymore. For some people, their work defines them, and without it, they don’t know who they are.

me in retirement? a sculpture at Wollombi!

For example, when you meet someone new, one of the first questions that will be asked is “so, what do you do?” and if you aren’t prepared for that, the answer for a retiree could easily become “nothing – I’m retired”. In your mind, that “nothing” can easily be extended to become the answer to “what AM I?”, not just “what do I do?”.

I mentioned in a previous post that Les and I had prepared for retirement. One thing we did was address this issue of “what am I if I’m retired?”, and to help us with that, we searched out books at the library, and articles on-line. But the thing we noticed was that many of those were aimed at people retiring at what would be considered a normal age (60 and older).

Are there other people out there who have retired early? Talk to me!

In the Garden

One advantage of being retired is that I can now spend quality time in the garden.

I have always had a preference for having Australian natives in my garden. One of the reasons is that planting natives, and those that are suited to the conditions here, means that the garden doesn’t need as much tender loving care. Another reason is that I find them just so attractive, diverse, and interesting.

Professional garden designers seem to favour mass planting, but we seem to have ended up with just one of lots of different plants. I like it, and that’s all that matters. We’ve got banksias, callistemons (bottle brushes), lilly pillies, acacias (wattles, both flowering and non-flowering), and any number of different grevilleas. We’ve got native violets and brachyscomes (coastal daisies) for ground covers.  Even though the block of land is quite small, we even managed to put in a eucalyptus tree, that has the most amazing gnarled look at the base of the trunk, and smooth as a baby’s as you go higher up the trunk. I think it’s a mallee of some sort.

They all seem to flower at slightly different times. But even if they didn’t, the different foliage colours and styles means the garden always has something interesting to look at.

So when we move to Bathurst, we will be leaving behind this little oasis for the next people who live here. I will miss our garden. But our new home has a bigger yard, which means more opportunity for plants! It will take some time, and it will be a constantly-changing thing, but we will have a garden to be happy in.

To get ready for the move, we collected seeds from the wattles and one of the grevilleas, and it was my job to try to grow new plants so we could take them with us. We also bought some seeds for plants we would like to have. My favourite Australian plant is the Grass Tree (Xanthorrhoea), so of course that was one.


See the little seedlings on the left!

And we are being adventurous and trying to grow some waratahs. Wish us luck!



But our new garden won’t just be decorative. It already has some apple trees, planted by the people who built the home we are moving to. They apparently already produce fruit – and I love apples! We will be adding a vegetable patch, but I’m not planning exactly what we will have yet, until we get there and I see where I can put it and how big it can be.

But I do know that our miniature peach will be coming with us. And there will be at least one tomato plant during summer, as I pretty much eat tomatoes every day. Both of us find cucumbers disgusting, so we won’t have them (pity, because I’m told they are really easy to grow).

I’m looking forward to planning the vegetable patch. I’m looking forward to growing the Australian native plants. I’m looking forward to spending quality time in our new garden.

What do you like about your garden?

Just Get to the Point

I called this blog “A Joyful Retirement” because I wanted to talk about how retirement is for me. But it seems that I haven’t really spoken about that so far. It’s about time I did.

It’s been a bit over two years since we retired. My husband (Les) and I retired at the same time. We celebrate that day each year, with a lunch out somewhere. So far it has been at the same place – a nice café not too far away, but on the water’s edge, overlooking a pool. In the coming years, it will probably change because we are moving to Bathurst, and I can’t see the need to travel down to Sydney just for a lunch. Bathurst has nice cafés too.

We retired a bit earlier than lots of people do – Les was not yet 50, and I had only just turned 50. We had planned for it, and done lots of preparation. We’d worked through the finances (well, Les had, since he is the financial wizard in our partnership), and we’d worked through the emotional challenges, and we knew we were ready.

Our main reasons for retiring were so we could spend more time doing things together (but not excluding doing things on our own – we still do that), and actually enjoy our life together, doing the things WE want, at our own pace.

Some people were sceptical. Won’t you get bored? How will you keep your brain active? Won’t you miss things about work? These are valid questions, and part of our preparation for retiring was to find OUR answers to these questions.

For now, the short answers are:

v  Yes, sometimes I am bored, but mostly, no, I’m not. I have so many things to do, or that I want to do, that my biggest problem is deciding which I’ll get started on at any given time.

v  Sometimes I think I’m losing it, forgetting why I went into the lounge room, for example. But I don’t think that’s unusual – it happens to everyone. I keep my brain active in so many ways – the usual way of doing puzzles and games, but also by learning new things, talking to interesting people, being interested in things.

learning to mow the lawn!

v  And yes, I do miss things about work, but these things can be handled in another way, not by going back to work (believe me, I tried it, and it wasn’t the answer). I can still catch up with the people I miss. I can still mix with a variety of different people (different ages, different backgrounds) by getting involved in a variety of activities.

view from the venue of 21st birthday party we attended

As this blog goes on, I’ll write about these in more detail.

Are you thinking of retiring? Have you done so already? Are you enjoying it? How have you handled the challenges that you’ve encountered?

I’d love to hear from you!

Just Buy Another One!

I drink water a lot during the day. It’s thirst-quenching and good for me – and I quite like it J During summer, we keep water in the fridge in glass bottles, and fill up from there.

The trouble is, the little seals on the swing top deteriorate over time and make the bottle impossible to use unless you stand it upright in the fridge. But I’m not that keen on that because the water takes on that stale taste – not so nice.

But the shops that sell the bottles don’t sell replacement seals. Why not? Because the bottles themselves only cost a couple of dollars to buy, so you just buy a new bottle, they tell me. Surprisingly, I got the same response from friends when I asked them if they knew where to buy new seals. NOT GOOD ENOUGH!!

I’m really trying to reduce the amount of waste in our household, and buying new water bottles just because the current ones need new seals seems to be a huge waste to me. So, it took a bit of research on the internet, but eventually I found them. Yay!  Only $0.30 each if I collect them from the shop. I had to drive to a suburb about 30mins away to get them, but it was the only place I could find where I didn’t have to buy a pack of 100 seals, or pay $10 to have them delivered.

And the place I finally found the seals? It was a brewing supplies shop!

Do other people simply buy new bottles? Is there somewhere easy to get them that I didn’t think of? What do you do?

Just Being Realistic

There I was, thinking I could blog every day. How unrealistic was I! Now I have changed my expectations, and hope that I will be able to blog once a week. But I am not going to be obsessive about it – if I blog, good, if I don’t, OK.

Now that the chaos of the festive season is over, I’ve managed to get a few things done. One thing was to make some more soft toys. My first attempts were Wonky and Notso (pattern from Funky Friends Factory), and I was quite happy with them.

Then I set myself the challenge to make Patty the Cow (also from Funky Friends Factory). Much more difficult, with more pieces, and made in cotton so not as forgiving with the stretch as the fleece I used for Wonky and Notso.

 

 

My 2013 challenge was Stu the Sea Turtle (and yes, again from Funky Friends Factory). Again, a challenge because, although the number of pieces wasn’t greater, the fabric I used was plush, and something new to me. But I’m happy. I hope my niece likes him.
 

Something else I’ve started this year – I want to complete the Couch to 5km program (Google C25K and you will find HEAPS of info). I started it once before and didn’t get further than Week 3, mostly because the music on the podcasts just wasn’t to my taste, and having to listen to the voice of the man telling me what to do was just horrible – I’m not a fan of broad American accents.

But luckily I found a series of podcasts that (so far) suit me. I got them from the UK National Health Service website – why doesn’t Australia produce something like this?

Yes, this sounds like a typical New Year Resolution, and you are possibly thinking that it will go the way of all such things (ie give up before February). That may well happen, but I hope not.

Enjoy! And I’ll be back some time soon.