Reflections on a "Do It Now" Retirement

Do it now! -- Duane Comport (1923-2012) Many other people have no doubt said this, but my dad made the biggest impression on me with these words.

Three years ago, I made the decision to retire. Although I'd been debating with myself for several years, in the end, deciding to retire was easy. We'd done the spreadsheets to know I could retire. Then my mom got sick, which meant I should retire. And her illness also revealed to me how much I wanted to retire. I no longer loved my job. And I had no stomach for walking the tightrope between personal and professional life that I had accomplished so successfully (most of the time) when raising my kids. I didn't feel I had the energy to do that with an ailing mom and a no longer "do it now" dad. So, retire I did. For such a momentous decision, it was ultimately made in "Do it now!" style.

Fortunately, my mom's illness proved to be symptom-free for quite a long time. It got her in the end, in February of 2012, but until the last two months, she was relatively healthy and mentally as sharp as ever. So I had the luxury of learning to be retired and doing all the things I wanted to do, more or less, while still spending time with my parents.

That's where the "do it now" dilemma of retirement comes in. I've discovered in my almost three years of "leisure" that retirement is its own kind of balancing act -- teetering between "I should" and "why should I?"

Without the daily grind and monster to-do list, life becomes a wonderful and scary blank slate. A retiree's to-do list becomes mostly a list of your own making, with your own idiosyncratic priorities. And things that you thought you would do, such as writing regular blog posts, somehow keep getting shuffled to the bottom of the list.

I recently took a fun class -- at least fun for a "writing nerd" like me. The class reminded me of how much I love to write, which I know is hard to believe because most people hate to write. I also started reading the wonderfully funny book Eats, Shoots and Leaves. I found myself saying over and over "I wish I'd written that." So I'm determined to give it a whirl. I'm not completely sure what my "voice" will be. But here I am... Just Jelan.