projects – Retirementally Challenged

Searching for balance in retirement

Sometimes it seems like it’s been much less than two years since I was wrapping up my final weeks of employment and looking forward to the day I retire. At other times, it’s as if I’ve been living this leisurely lifestyle for many years and I can hardly remember having full-time work obligations.

I had a lot of plans for my retirement: I wanted to take classes, travel, socialize with friends, complete household projects, and explore my creative side. I also wanted to allow enough leisure time in my non-existent schedule to relax, read books, and daydream.

Mission accomplished… sort of.

Is it possible to have too much leisure? Maybe so.

Since retiring, my husband and I have gone on some amazing trips (and more are planned), I’ve taken advantage of free—and nearly free—educational opportunities, I’ve joined a wonderful book club, we’ve completed multiple house projects (and have more in the works), and I’ve spent time writing and improving my photography skills. Life is good.

But, just recently, I’ve started to struggle with the feeling that I would like to do more, that I want to have more to show for my time. This doesn’t mean that I desire to go back to full-time work, or even that I want to find part-time employment. What I want is more balance in my life.

Besides receiving a regular paycheck and subsidized healthcare insurance, going to work every day provided a lot of intangible benefits. Daily interactions with colleagues wove a social network that helped to make work a pleasurable experience. Because I worked for a large company, my network web included people from a variety of backgrounds and with diverse interests and skills.

I miss that.

I also miss the feeling of working together towards a common goal. We took on projects and supported each other as we met our objectives. In addition, work gave me opportunities to challenge myself and to enjoy the feeling of satisfaction when I successfully expanded my comfort zone.

I’m not sure where this sense that something is missing will lead me. Exploring volunteer opportunities might be a good start. Perhaps I need to get involved with a cause that I believe in. Maybe some type of part-time employment will supply the diverse community I miss. Perhaps it’s a combination of all three possibilities, or maybe something else.

I fully realize how lucky I am that I actually have a choice about how I spend my time. If I make no changes at all, I have a pretty good life. But if I can find something that allows me to make a positive contribution, I think my retirement could be more purposeful and satisfying. It also might help me re-discover some or all of those missing elements: enjoying an expanded and more diverse social network, being inspired by a vision shared with others, and embracing the opportunity to help others and to challenge myself.

The key will be to find something that also allows me to travel when I want and to enjoy the retirement I envisioned when I said good-bye to full-time employment.

Construction Zone

Our living room has been in disarray for a couple of months as we’ve been working on our latest home improvement project: removing our old fireplace, reframing the wall, installing a new fireplace, tiling the surround, and installing new cabinets. While working on this project, we have completely reconfigured our living room and dining room furniture to get it out of the way of the mess and allow room to work. We hope to be done with everything before the end of the year.

The toilet in our master bathroom is currently sitting on its side in the middle of the floor. Also, all of the items that usually reside under our kitchen sink are now out of the cabinet and in the garage.

Although the living room project was planned, the toilet and kitchen sink were a complete surprise. When we returned home after being away for several weeks, we discovered water where it shouldn’t be; first around the toilet, then under the sink… totally independent, totally unexpected, and totally not what we need right now. Although there wasn’t a lot of water, any water where it shouldn’t be can’t be ignored.

It seems like my husband and I have at least one home project in the works almost continually. Sometimes big, sometimes small, but almost always it (or they) becomes a focus in our lives for far too much time. After the living room is done, there are at least two more good-sized projects I can think of waiting in the wings. This doesn’t include the normal house maintenance projects everyone has (our water heater should be replaced, the living room needs repainting, bushes need trimming, etc.).

We claim that we don’t want to keep taking on these projects, yet, for some reason, we do. We say that our idea of a fulfilling retirement includes more focus on fun, travel and hobbies, and less on construction, dust, and upheaval, but the evidence suggests otherwise.

One of the problems is that we (and by “we” I mean my husband) are pretty skilled at do-it-yourself projects. And, because we (my husband) know how to do these things, we like them to be done a certain way. In addition, we (that would be both of us) are relatively frugal and have a hard time justifying paying someone else to do what we can do ourselves.

Upon returning home from our latest trip, we walked into the living room we left. The one wall was still just bare studs; the brown craft paper was still taped to the floor; the furniture was still topsy-turvy. We didn’t expect HGTV to visit our home and finish everything while we were gone, but the contrast of where we just were (on vacation: pure leisure for three weeks) and what was in front of us was striking. It was good to be home – we love our home – but we had a hard time facing the work we still have to do.

We’ve recently talked about our habit of taking on too much and agree that we need to make some changes in our approach to large household projects. We want to be more realistic about what REALLY needs to be done and, if we decide the outcome is worth the effort and expense, be more open to paying someone else to do the work. Then, after receiving a tradesperson’s bid, the (usually shockingly high) estimate needs to be evaluated against the physical and psychological costs of doing the work ourselves. Are we willing to have our retirement filled with days (weeks, months) of labor? How about the little quarrels that often occur when we are tired and stressed? And then, of course, there are the aches and pains we most likely will suffer because we are no longer 30… or 40.

When we take everything into consideration as we compare one cost to the other, I expect that often the value of freeing up our time will be worth the expense.

(Over)Thinking Things Through

A little over ten years ago, in preparation for our wedding festivities, my future husband and I purchased a barbecue grill. We were hosting our rehearsal dinner in our back yard and planned to grill and serve carne asada to our guests. At that time, our yard was just dirt – we had not yet poured concrete for the patio nor did we have any landscaping to speak of. Because our vision for the backyard included a barbecue island, the grill we purchased was a “slide-in” and didn’t include a stand.

Not to be stymied, my very resourceful and skilled soon-to-be-husband welded up a temporary stand to hold the grill for that night and, we figured, for several months to come.

Ten years later, the grill is still sitting on that stand. As a shout-out to the hubby, the stand is still solid. Rusty, but solid. The grill has been moved from place to place over the years and gets a lot of use, especially in the summer. He built one terrific temporary stand.

That situation is about to change. Over the last few weeks (OK, months), we’ve been building our permanent barbecue island. Its metal frame has been screwed together, the cement board attached, and we are ready to add the countertop and siding material. Once that is complete, we will carefully remove our grill from its home of ten years, place it on its new resting site, hook it to the natural gas pipes, and fire it up.

My husband and I never do anything quickly. We agonize over every detail and question every decision. We’ve made many false starts then have backtracked when we decide to go another way. I guess the good news is we are just alike this way; one of us paired up with a quick and sure decision maker would probably lead to disastrous results, or, at least, abject misery for both people.

Despite this flaw in both of our characters, we’ve managed to make some pretty good decisions (or, maybe non-decisions) along the way. Because of our propensity not to take compulsive action, we didn’t rush out of the stock market when past crashes have occurred (as they will again). We ride the market down, than back up again, taking advantage of “cheap” buys along the way. We didn’t rush into our marriage (only after 13 years of “dating” did we tie the knot) and we are likely not to make compulsive, poorly considered choices that will threaten our relationship.

After the barbecue island is built, we have a few more big projects to finish. Topping the list is the cabinetry in our living room (our remodel was completed, except for this area, about 15 years ago), and a wall between our house and our neighbor’s (should it be a block wall, wood, metal. or, maybe a combination? to replace a rickety wooden fence poorly constructed by a former neighbor maybe 8 years ago. We also have plenty of smaller projects to keep us busy for a while.

My personal goal was to have all of our bigger projects done by the time I retired. I envisioned being able to relax and enjoy our fully completed home for a few months before starting to tackle some of the smaller “to-dos” on my list. This is clearly not going to happen.

When the area for the living room cabinetry was designed years ago, flat screen TVs didn’t exist so the space is deep enough to accept an old-fashioned tube TV. This change in technology has caused our original design to be scrapped. I hope that we get the project done before we are all wearing virtual reality headsets, making the need for a TV obsolete. I really hate the thought of having to start the project all over again.