Good for you. I reached full retirement age last year and I’m okay with not going back. I’m glad I wasn’t out there mowing fairways this year. My best year was 2019 when I was the top mower with more acreage covered than anyone else. Then came the COVID and that course was closed until further notice, so I hunkered down and just collected the regular unemployment, plus all the extra weeks for which I qualified. It was right about then that I decided to start receiving SSA retirement benefits at 62 and I’m glad I did.
I am coming up on one year of being retired, and If my body was a bit more spry, this would be the best time of my life.
I did wonder with some degree of trepidation if I was one of those people who worked at a high stress, high responsibility job who simply got addicted to the stress and could not adjust to the inactivity of retirement.
The kind of people who are miserable and kick the bucket within a year or two of retirement. I didn’t think so, but I wasn’t sure.
Nope. Not one of them.
I am enjoying this as life should be enjoyed.
I have become a homebody. I don’t feel the need to have a job. I don’t have the need to travel. I am taking better care of myself.
I am doing things, at my own pace (or...my wife’s pace) and on my own time.
I have hobbies, I design and print all manner of 3D things, I have been working on, of all things, a 1/32 scale model of an F-14 Tomcat that I built to about 85% complete back in 1982, and have carried it with me everywhere as I moved.
I lay in my hammock and read, listen to podcasts or audiobooks, and watch the birds. I visit with friends.
I am happy in my marriage, and I am finding Christ.
This. Is. Just. Awesome.
Don’t they still need to keep it mowed? They just let it grow wild?