I posted my retirement position on the Thoughts on When to Retire thread, but will repeat here because it answers my “now what.”
Because I started planning/dreaming about retirement from the first day of my first job, I was never concerned about how I would fill my time when I jettisoned the very thing that was keeping me from the life I desired. I never wanted to work and hated every minute of it. For me, leaving the workforce was like stepping out of jail after decades of confinement and forced labor.
The first thing I did was SLEEP. I think I slept most of the first three months. Just turning off the alarm (and never turning it on again) was liberating. I vowed to do absolutely nothing for the first six months, just luxuriate in the absence of a schedule. It delighted me to get up when I wanted, shower when I wanted (or not), shop in the middle of the day, stay up late with no concern for the morrow, read to my heart’s content, take naps, lunch with my mom/friends whenever I felt like it and, best, lose the sense of days (every day is Friday). I was giddy with freedom.
It’s almost eights years later, and my life is exactly what I was longing for in my twenties – permanently unscheduled time to do whatever I please, and whatever I please happily fills my days.
On a previous thread, we talked about concerns for establishing routines and feeling productive in retirement. I think “productive” and “routine” are work/job words. I left these behind, too. For me, retirement was not about replacing one routine with another or feeling any pressure to be “productive,” whatever that means. I think these concepts put unnecessary stress on what should be your glorious freedom. And that means freedom to do whatever you want whenever you want, even if that is absolutely nothing–or what looks like nothing to someone else. I think retirement is a time to ask yourself that classic question: What would you do if you knew you could not fail? Rephrased: What would you do if a paycheck no longer mattered? The people I know who are truly embracing retirement for all its worth can’t tell you what they do with their days but are astonished by how time flies. They joke, “I’m not sure how I ever found time for my job.” They are fully engaged with family, friends, and community, and they do some wonderful things, but retirement looks very different for each of them.
There is no “right” way to enjoy this new phase of your life, so don’t burden yourself trying to justify what you do with your time. It’s yours at last. In the early months especially, I would advise that you simply enjoy that extra sleep, linger over those cups of coffee, turn off the clocks, reconnect with old friends, pick up a book…feel that freedom. And don’t worry, retired life has a gentle way of drawing you toward where you need to be and what you should be doing, but you have to slow down and let it.