January 20 was my last day at work. The date of my retirement was March 20. I had two months of paid leave left.
I thought, ah, I do not have to go anymore. Relieved, maybe. It was a feeling I cannot really put into words. There was no big emotion. Retirement did not feel real. That is the honest truth.
The week after I retired, and the month after that, the feeling of I have retired never came. No switch flipped anywhere. I wake up in the morning, make tea, and go for a walk. Almost nothing changed from before.
Those Two Months, I Moved Around Quite a Bit
I have no memory of having too much time on my hands during those two months of using up my leave.
I did a lot of things around the house. The tidying up that had piled up, throwing out things we did not need, changing things over for the season. What I would normally do little by little on weekends, I finished all at once on weekdays.
I was an officer of the neighborhood association, so there was also the job of arranging who would take the posts for the next year. Who to ask, how to hand things over. I made phone calls, I visited houses. That ate up more time than I expected.
My workmates held a farewell party for me. I went to the funeral of someone I knew. I did my tax return. I went shopping with my wife. I changed the tires. I watched the morning TV serial, the one that airs every weekday, slowly. When I was a company employee I recorded it and watched it now and then, but for the first time I tasted the luxury of watching it live. It was a fairly busy two months.
Why It Did Not Feel Real
Probably because the weight of the company in my life had been dropping little by little for years before I retired.
At sixty four or sixty five, I started receiving my pension. At the same time, I moved from being a permanent employee on shift work, with night shifts, to a part-time job of three days a week, three hours a day. The time I spent at the company got much shorter all at once.
Just losing the night shifts made life a lot easier. Get up in the morning, sleep at night. That ordinary life came back.
From there I worked part-time for three years, and then I retired. The period when the company was the center of my life had ended long before. So even when I went in for the last time on January 20, nothing changed.
Forty Years of Being Made to Do It on the Shop Floor
What came down from my boss was a target and a number of units, with the words, this is the one thing we cannot miss. Everything else, all the setting up, was left to the floor. If the menu, the mix of items to run that day, was put together badly, we would not hit the production target for the day. Every day a different menu, and we handled it on the floor. There were days when I thought, that killed me.
You are made to do it, and at the same time you have to use your head. Forty years means that.
I Had Been Practicing How to Pass the Time
After I switched to part-time work, I practiced all kinds of things.
I made a habit of getting up at 6:30 in the morning. At first it was hard. Even so, I kept it up, and I started to wake up on my own.
I made housework my own job. Laundry, cleaning, cleaning the bath and the toilet. Things I had left to my wife, I started doing myself, little by little. At first the bath alone took me 30 minutes. Now I finish it in 10.
I watched all kinds of videos on video sites. Talks about money, talks about how to live. Things I had never thought about before, I watched every day. It was around then that I vaguely thought I would like to try a blog.
If I had waited until the day I retired and only then thought, what do I do from here, nothing would have come to mind. I spent years getting ready a little at a time, and that is why I have what I have now.
Maybe I Was the Shallow One
Watching people talk about anxiety after retirement, I have thought, did they not practice?
But when I think about it, nobody teaches anyone how to practice. The company teaches the paperwork for retiring, but it does not teach how to live after retiring. A person has to notice it on their own.
I only happened to notice. I am in no position to talk big.
Free Time After Retirement Does Not Come Suddenly
Free time after retirement does not fall out of the sky one day. It comes closer little by little, for years.
From the moment a person notices it, starting to practice a little at a time is enough. Learn one household chore. Find a place to spend time outside the company. Do that much, and the day you retire does not feel like anything.
Free time that is forced on me, I do not like. It is boring. Having time on your hands and still being made to do things, there is nothing worse than that. But when I am doing what I want to do, there is never enough time. That is where I am now. Too many things I want to do, and not enough time.
I went in for the last time on January 20, and there was no special emotion. Only, ah, I do not have to go anymore. I think this was fine.
Well, that is all it is.
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