Replying to a commenter Weston

Transcript

Mark says he's kind of agonizing over the decision to finally retire. And I asked him a couple of follow-up questions in the comments. And he told me that it's not a financial issue. He's good to go there. He's just really more worried about the staying busy, keeping connections, the social stuff, the emotional things. And I asked him if he was done done with work. He said, for now, but he may come back and do some consulting in a year or so. And honestly, Mark, if I would have taken this approach when I retired, it would have made my transition much better. I think you've got a pretty good plan. If you're like me, I don't know. But if I would have said, I'm just going to kind of kick back for a year and then decide to what degree I want to reenter the workforce. I wouldn't have stressed so much over like retiring right or whatever. And I've mentioned in a few posts that I should have taken a gap year is what they call it. I read that in a retirement book and I love that concept. Basically, a year where you say, I'm not making any plans. I'm not deciding like who I'm going to be in retirement. I'm just going to take a year off and sort of heal. I'm going to heal up from all the workplace trauma that I've experienced my whole life. And during that year, I'll think about it, but I don't have to make a decision in that year. That year is just for relaxing and essentially just recovering from a lifetime of solving someone else's problems. And and, you know, always being a resource. And it is hard to recover from that. But taking that year and just committing to just. Kicking back and, you know, don't don't feel like you have to relax performatively either. Whatever makes you feel relaxed is fine. If it's just sitting, just sit. If it's golfing, golf, fishing, whatever, kayaking, you decide. But how you relax is a very personal thing. But it would have helped me a lot if I would have done exactly what you're planning on doing. And that's saying, you know what? I'm not really going to decide what my retirement is going to look like. I'm going to just take a year. And just rest and recover. Good luck with your retirement, though. It sounds like you're off to a good start.