I am now into my first week of retirement and I don’t believe it has hit me yet that I don’t need to get up at the ass crack of dawn.  I’m trying to stay up later to enable me to sleep in the next morning. It hasn’t quite worked yet. That will be a work in progress!

I know it has only been one week, but I have a few lessons learned.

• The go go go go has not stopped, it has merely morphed into something new. Admittedly that is the result of my medical scare on the very first official day of retirement. My wife and I had a busy first week traveling to medical appointments and running errands that took us away from home. I suppose it makes sense that if I travel four hours for a hair cut, traveling an hour and a half for a medical appointment is no big deal. Besides that, there are a lot of transitional errands on our list.
• It is a little more difficult to keep track of the days of the week. I keep asking my wife, what day is it again?
• I still check my e-mail as if I am still employed full-time. I remained per diem to fix any problems that might arise after retirement with the database I set up for the hospital. It is hard to completely disconnect.
• The perpetual smile on my face at being able to sleep with my wife every night is still there. I still can’t believe we finally made it.
• I pay a lot more attention to those companies offering “Senior” discounts.
• I haven’t had a lot of time to write, contrary to what I believed might be the case before retirement.  I think that this initial transition period will settle and I will be able to write more, but we’ll see….

Now for the interesting research on retirement as a concept. I know y’all want to learn about that!

• Not much retirement was happening prior to the 18th century because people didn’t live long enough to warrant retirement with the average life expectancy between 26 and 40. Although, it did pay to be in the Military during the height of the Roman Empire because military folk received a pension.
• The concept of retirement in the U.S. is believed to have taken root after a valedictory address at Johns Hopkins Hospital by the Canadian physician William Oster who stated anyone over 60 was useless and should be put out to pasture.
• It wasn’t until the industrial revolution where the concept of retirement really caught on with aging factory workers. With age came a slow down in the assembly line and that just would not do!
• The original concept of social security was born from the Californian,  Francis Townsend, who proposed a plan for compulsory retirement at age 60 in exchange for paying $200 per month. Franklin D. Roosevelt offered a different idea and the Social Security Act of 1935 was born.
• However, before the Social Security Act, around 1910, Florida was becoming a retirement destination and by the 1920s and 1930s retirement communities were popping up like pesky gophers. This paved the way for an explosion of golf courses.
• Finally, in 1999, The American Association of Retired Persons dropped “Retired” from its name and turned into “AARP Inc.”  Note: We haven’t joined yet, but we plan to. AARP has been sending me information for years! 

My journey into retirement will likely involve more reading, some writing, and definitely a foray into video blogs as we take our maiden journey in the RV. For those of you who are retired and have time to read or others who simply need something relaxing to do after work, perhaps you will check out a few of my books. The links are below!

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