Avoiding the 3 B’s
By Annie Ryall
Retirement. Such a limiting word. It conjures up images of bingo, bowls and boredom. The absence of doing something.
It implies your usefulness is at an end for how many of us value work which is not paid?
You are fiddle faddling around doing activities to “fill in time” whilst you’re waiting for poverty, a dreaded malady or worse still the insidious erosion of capacity to set in.
In this blog I set out to challenge this view.
Perhaps we should change the word we use for this phase of life?
I mean when you look at the word “re-tire” it’s as if you are already tired and by stopping work (or partially stopping work) you get to be tired all over again??? Exhausting….
Admittedly after 40-50 odd years of working you may well be tired and deserve some down time.
Of course the dictionary meaning comes from the French verb “retirer” meaning to “withdraw to a place of safety or seclusion.”
Whatever your interpretation, I think the term re-tirement is due for a makeover.
Where to start? What is my bucket list?
- Learning how to think again – (it could take a while)
- Cranking up the rusty cogs of creativity one faded neuron at a time
- Taking a “nothing to lose and even less to give” attitude to get on board with a cause I am passionate about
- Writing a staggeringly insightful, comedic play to world (well at least my family’s) acclaim
- Sharing and promoting great things that other people are doing (in a non FOMO way)
Hope is a great thing.
To launch into this void, I need to find out how other people are managing the leap. Have they found their post-work community yet? What are the challenges and what are the positives?
Retirement Survey
To help me gather this information, I have developed a survey which you can complete here. The results will be published in this blog.
We’ll also be talking to a range of people who embody the before and after of retirement, so watch this space!
Coming Up
We hear from a retiree who found his new community at an Arts Festival with connections to Montreal. So what is he doing lurking beside the Upfield railway line at 2.00am in the morning? Read our next post to find out!
