Goodbye Tension - Hello Pension!

Guest Blog by Louise

As you may know, I am now retired too with my last day in the office being March 13th and my last paid day being today, April 17th. Ken has been retired since January, 2007 so he has had a lot of free time to do many things, such as writing blogs, with no interruptions during most days. Now that I'm home, his whole day is interrupted and I think I am impinging on his blogging time. Oh well, I will do a 'guest blog' to make up for this break in his free time, so he doesn't have to do a blog tonight.

While I am going through a transition period as I adjust to being retired, Ken is going through his own transition period, having me around 24/7! We do enjoy each other's company and so the transition period is going pretty well from my perspective. I certainly am enjoying waking up at 6:00 am, looking at the clock, rolling over and getting in a couple more hours of sleep. That part of the transition is going well but I am still working on developing a new daily routine. I have always said that it is important to retire to something and my plan is to exercise more, work on different crafts that I haven't work on for years and to do some writing. I am very good at planning to do stuff but the follow through is definitely lacking! At least I am getting some writing in today.

Ken reassures me that I will fall in to a routine, but my brain is still in 'holiday mode' and likely will be stuck there for a while. I certainly didn't enjoy my last couple of years of work and when I did take holidays, tended to focus on recharging myself to go back to face my work situation. I seem to still be in this mindset even though I did just have a wonderful 2-week vacation in Hawaii and I don't have to go back to those unpleasant work situations. It's funny, just because the brain knows something is so, the heart seems to need more time to deal with reality. I do have time and know my heart is slowly embracing this new phase of my life.

Until the new routine unfolds, I will continue to delight in sleeping in and not having to go to the dysfunctional workplace I used to go to. Ken and I will find our new life rhythm and all will be well in our world, as it has been up to this point in time.