Retirement

I’ve been retired now for three months. What is life like?

It’s slower, more spread out, quieter. Few things have to be done by the clock. Though I spend two hours a day up in the bedroom working on my writing, that’s not a job, and I can ignore it if I want to.

The map of the day, of course, is much different. I used to get up at 5:45 on weekdays and tried to have the lights out by 10:30. My body has adjusted to going to bed about an hour later and getting up about 90 minutes later (11:30 pm to sometime between 7 and 7:30 am). I set no alarms.

Though I don’t seem to have as much to do, I’m not bored. I read a lot — both books and on the web. My reading list is far longer than it used to be, and no less hopeless to get through. I’m trying to not treat reading as something to be quantified, but to just enjoy it (which I do either way).

Before I retired, I bought a Nintendo Switch 2, thinking I would dig out my inner gamer, which I thought I’d been suppressing for years. I immediately fell into Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I played Animal Crossing years ago on the Nintendo DS, but not like this. I was at it for an hour or more a day before retirement, several hours a day afterward, until January 15, when the version 3 update came out.

And I just quit.

The reasons are complex. I was beginning to think I really don’t like “decorating games,” where a lot of the play is tied up in acquiring and using furnitures, clothes, etc. I enjoyed going around my island every day, collection fruit, fishing, watering flowers and crop. I didn’t like going to the holiday island and doing interior decoration for clients. When version 3 came out, with Cap’ns hotel, I felt as though decorating was going to be unavoidable. I had hit a hard wall, and I haven’t touched it since.

I still enjoy the Switch 2, though I haven’t gotten too seriously into any other games. I’m enjoying Pokemon GrassGreen, mostly because it’s an old-fashioned Pokemon game. I’ll try some Civilization, a game I have enjoyed on the Mac, and perhaps I’ll give Stardew Valley a try. I’ve bounced off of Cyberpunk 2077, No Man’s Sky and several Zeldas; I don’t hate them, but nothing seems to be pulling me back to playing them any more than I have.

Sometimes I think I would rather have bought a Steamdeck. A dedicated console like the Switch 2 seems limited; it would be great if it at least offered a browser, or Netflix, or _something.

And that brings up the other big thing about retirement: money. Fortunately that is fine, just different. The pattern of incoming money has changed, due to Social Security delivery times, which don’t match the old two week payday sequences of work, and fixed monthly withdrawals from investment accounts. I’m very happy to have YNAB (You Need A Budget) to help with the planning and management of money each month.

I don’t miss working at all. I still miss my co-workers, though. Soon I’ll have lunch with one or two of them, and I’m really looking forward to that. Marilyn says “Going to catch up on gossip, hmm?” to which I just nod, because that’s exactly it.