Things retirees get up to
Lessons which might assist the new beginning of life as a pensioner?
1. What do you want to be when you grow up?
" I was open to pain and crossed by the rain, And I walked on a crooked crutch
I strolled all alone through a fallout zone, And came out with my soul untouched".
Bruce Springsteen
What brought these thoughts to me, I wonder and some people say to me, "I can’t wait to retire. Those people seemingly have wider ambitions than me, I guess?
I have found thinking about retirement a rather daunting prospect. As I have recalled about my dad in an earlier post - He retired in his sixties to look after my mum. Surviving daily on his pension payments and joint state pension pay-outs. He loved cars and used the Motorbility Scheme too. However, just before he passed and at certain times during his life, my father always said to me “don’t retire too early”; because, I guess he found it hard to do things with his day once the “chores”, as he called them, were done.
Looking after my mother who had severe rheumatoid arthritis in her legs and arms, he did a cracking job and always had a smile and he always said out loud “laughter is the best medicine”.
So now it’s my time to think about retirement now being around five years away from it at the time of writing this blog. It’s 2022 and we have experienced a pandemic for the last three years. We’ll never get that time back. I have started some 'Facebooking' and there are old friends and family ‘liking’ and commenting too. But since I have left the Royal Navy, I haven’t made any new friends really. I really should though, and I envy those that have what are sometimes called “real friends, not deal friends”.
Real friends are those you meet daily or weekly or sometimes infrequently but they have added value to your life. Some meet up to ‘knit and natter’ or play a round of golf or go to the pub or learn the Rumba 1 or something similar in their combined interests.
Deal friends are those that you meet as colleagues mainly in a work environment. Some of those people can be toxic and can if you fall foul of them affect your happiness or stress levels especially when you are working with them. According to the author Oliver Jones who wrote the book on ‘Office Politics’ people can use you to get to the top or even take your job, these people have psychopath demeanours. Jones states, in his book that “many psychopaths manage to sustain careers that are reasonably successful made all the easier by the rapidity with which people now move between companies and professions.” I have come across many such types during my time both in the Service and especially when I left to take up civilian employment, so my advice is look out for them but don’t count on them for friendship in your later happiness.
Remember these lines sung in the 80s ?
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused
These are no "Sweet Dreams" I want to revisit Annie. These words though ring true at least for me. I wonder if my readers have met these so called "deal friends"?
HAPPINESS
I saw Billy Connoly on the TV the other day and he said that happiness is a good book, a cup of tea and digestive biscuit. He also enjoys a naked dance apparently. This outrageous but fine comedian, now suffers with Parkinsons Disease. He has many friends and of course the funds to spend out his days with his lovely family in the sunshine of Florida and hence Billy can enjoy retirement as its meant to play out.
Currently, I find myself without a social scene, still working to some extent as I have a mortgage to pay for until around 2030. I have not really mastered Facebook, Twitter or Instagram unlike the youth and my youngsters still around me. These ' zoomers' or 'generation z' people, were raised on mobile phone technology, drones and are the Playstation Generation. Even I play FIFA22.
They are unlike some of the generations before them and the so called baby boomers who grew up with 45 and 33 rpm records, that transistor radio that Van Morrison sings about in his rendition of "Brown Eyed Girl" . Alexa reminds me to get up or times the cooking these days and the friends who used to know me occasionally "like" the odd feature, I might make on the FB platform. But in your retirement period, one should really now be renewing face to face friendships or new friendships to secure some happiness.
Even my writing has the odd mistake so I hope you will forgive those odd 'SAGA moments' as I do try and use this platform and the technology which I am comfortable with as I think I am aware of some life skills which in reading my notes and queries and poems may reveal and pass on to you.
Personally, I am a bit scared of what lies ahead. However something, I don’t want to end up in, is the ‘fallout zone’ as lyrically detailed by my musical hero and another mega rich over seventies person - still working. The words above by Mr Bruce Springsteen are quite poignant to me held by the quote above from the song “Growing Up”.
So, what advisory, first words could I possibly provide on preparing for life when you are grown up and you reach retirement age. As the heading of this post intimates you will have to deal with those long weekends.
My Five Point Plan
- Find yourself in your skill sets which you have used to work, live, and learn.
2. Work out your needs to enable your retirement to be fun. This must include financial planning, how you motivate yourself and what you are going to do with the hours you will now have without work, commuting or children being dominant in your life.
3. Possibly make a bucket list of things you want to achieve in the remaining years following your retirement. You probably won’t win the lottery; you may play it with hope and well good luck, but make sure that real and regular money is part of the thinking process.
4. Include your partner in the preparations. If you are lucky enough to have someone who is much younger than you, good luck with living as long as him or her but try and keep yourself fit and healthy or go get the ‘crooked crutch’ ready.
5. Decide what ‘floats your boat’, sports, movies, handicrafts, jigsaw puzzles, card games, bingo, holidays, gardening, shopping, looking after grandkids, or just 'get togethers' with friends, knitting and nattering, Zumba or dancing other pursuits which I hope will surface later during my blogging experience.
To end this post.
I met a guy in the local social club who appeared a bit lost and he sat with me and I discovered he was eighty three years old. As he supped his IPA he recounted some memories and the loss of his partner. It inspired me to write a poem which may inspire you to get out and do something before you reach later life.
83
Young at heart, they often say,
But I know I'm “old”, my hair so grey.
Lonely days without a sound,
Of jazz or children, running round.
My entire life, has fleeted by,
I look back on good times which make me cry.
Lonely days without you here,
I reminisce and wipe a tear.
My dear, my love we were a team,
I see your face in every dream.
Lonely episodes, so tired and worn,
I miss you so, from dusk til dawn.
On my own, not you and me ,
I wander round, I make some tea.
Loneliness, an emotion, it comes and goes,
Coldness, no snuggling, to warm my toes.
At fifty three, We had some worth,
At sixty three, we laughed with mirth.
At seventy three, I was alone,
Now eighty three, no texts, no phone.
I rest, it’s late, it’s cold, am fed,
I walk the stairs, and climb in bed.
To wake again, at eighty three?
Or sleep forever and dream, be free…
See You Next Time.