Whenever I talk about some of the struggles that I…

Transcript

Whenever I do a post that talks about some of the sort of emotional issues that we face in the early stage of our retirement, what I call the triage phase, I get pretty much three basic responses. These are the top three anyway. The first one's not me. I've been planning. When it comes time for my retirement, I'm kicking back, relaxing. I'm not worrying about anything. The second one is get over yourself. You got to retire. So many people don't learn to chill out a little bit. And the third one is this sounds awful. I think I'll just work till I drop. And I think the best way to illustrate what people really, well, what I really went through in the early stage, the triage stage of my retirement would be with like a trip that you've really been looking forward to. So if you imagine. Imagine that you're going to take a trip, whatever it is that sounds awesome to you. Imagine that. For me, it's like spending time with the family. So I imagine if I were going to do like a 10 day trip where me and the whole family gets together and we just spend the whole time together, just having fun, you know, just joking around, doing things, whatever. And I get ready. I've been planning for this trip for a year and I've got it all figured out. I know the route I'm taking. I know what we're going to do every day. I'm ready. Like I've been thinking about it forever. There are no surprises. And and I'm just totally ready to just unplug. I'm not going to worry about what's going on in the world. I'm not going to worry about anything. I'm just going to take these 10 days and just relax and enjoy myself. And on the way to this vacation, I get into a little car wreck. It turns out I'm fine. I end up fine. But I do have. To be treated and it takes a couple of days. So whatever happens to me in this car accident, I do have to go to the hospital. I do have to get treatment and it does take a couple of days. I want to be really clear about that. I then go on to take my vacation and have a blast. We have a great time with the family. We even sort of start joking around about the incident on the way to the vacation, and it just becomes a part of that vacation. And sometimes when you when you think about the bad parts of the early stages of something, if you if you didn't experience it and see it through, you see that as the highlight. That little accident that I had on the way to that vacation wasn't the highlight of my vacation. It wasn't the end of my vacation. It was just a thing I had to go through on the way to having my vacation. So, you know, someone who would say. I'm not going to go on vacation. I'm not going to go on vacation. They haven't retired yet. And they'd say I've been playing and I'm ready. You can't plan for that auto accident that happens. It just happens to you. Then you have to you have to triage. So when it happens, it wasn't in your plan. And that makes it doubly bad for those of us that are planners, because, you know, we think the plan is going to be the thing that saves us. And then those of us who say. You know, just chill, get over yourself. It would be like if your family said, geez. That's a good thing. geez, okay, you've got a broken leg, a broken arm. Get over it. You're on vacation. Have fun. It's a real thing that's happening to you. You can't just get over it. You have to deal with it. And then, you know, for those that say, sounds awful, you know what I think I'll do? I think I'll just keep working until I drop. It would be like in this vacation story saying, I'm never taking a vacation. If that's how vacations go, no thank you. I think I'll just never take a vacation. And I say this not to criticize the people who have those feelings because those are very real. I had those feelings before my retirement. I'll have to do a post on what I thought my retirement was going to be, like how I had planned it out. Like I 100% had it figured out. And to be clear, I'm loving my retirement. I'm happy. I'm having fun. It's awesome. But there was a triage period. But... For those who would say, sounds awful. I think I'll just skip the whole thing. Would you skip that big, awesome trip with your family because there was a potential for a little wrinkle in the beginning that was unpleasant but did end and resulted in you still having that great trip and it even became sort of a part of that trip? So I just... For those of you that haven't retired yet and you're thinking, how can... How can I try and visualize what it is this guy's saying? Use the vacation analogy. I think it makes sense to me because I've taken enough vacations where things have gone wrong and you can't plan your way around it. But you still end up having a great vacation and, you know, everything ends up working out in the end. But I thought I'd share that.