Tag Archives: retirement

Practicality over sentimentality

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My brother-in-law was speaking to my father-in-law about moving into an assisted living home from a rancher. He said, “I guess practicality needs to be a priority over sentimentality,” and my father-in-law agreed.

Moving isn’t easy. Downsizing isn’t easy. Letting go of things with sentimental value isn’t easy.

The knowledge that ‘we can’t take it with us’ on the next journey anyway offers little solace. Furniture, framed pictures, books, souvenirs, trinkets, antiques, old treasures and keepsakes all hold memories within them. Reflections of the past stir, and the desire to hold on to yet another item, another memory, pulls at the heartstrings.

Eventually realization kicks in… practicality over sentimentality. You just can’t take everything with you.

Thinking about Retirement

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Tonight I’m going to the Principal’s retirement dinner. A good friend has asked me to do his introduction before he does his retirement speech. I enjoy going to this event and seeing the past retirees. And in all honesty I’ve thought of my own retirement a fair bit recently. While I haven’t picked a date yet, it’s less than five years away… and could be as soon as two.

Whenever I talk to retirees, they always share how busy they are. There is so much to do, places to go, people to see. They are not bored and if they want, there is always work they can get. In fact there are quite a few who end up going back to work for the school district. With the retirement bubble that’s happening and a shortage of teachers, opportunities abound.

And then there is the chance to travel more. I don’t have many regrets in life, but I do wish I travelled more when I was younger, and to me retirement opens up an opportunity to make up for that. I could easily list off 10 countries I’d like to visit sooner rather than later.

The thing that I think about most when it comes to retirement is what my routine will look like. I won’t be waking up at 5am to get my workout and writing in. I will be working out for longer, I will spend more time writing. I will also be cooking more meals and eating a bit more healthy. And I’ll probably work to some extent, although I don’t yet know what that will look like? With my retirement date approaching, you might think I’d have a better handle on what I’d be doing after this, but I think enough opportunities will present themselves.

I’m not someone who gets bored. I don’t spend time wondering what to do next. Retirement for me is about creating more options for myself. I’m not running away from my job, nor am I counting the days to the transition. Rather I’m seeing it as an opportunity to do more and different things.

It’s hard not to think of retirement as I head to this dinner to celebrate the retirement of my colleagues. I look to the future and I see myself enjoying that next phase of my life. But day-to-day I try not to think about it too much. There is still work to be done and joy to be found in my work. I’m grateful to have a job that feels purposeful and meaningful, and one that doesn’t have me counting the days until the next phase of my life.

Gen X Wave

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We are in for a unique change in the workforce. We are approaching a wave of Generation X retirements and that’s leading to shortages in the workforce. Teachers, nurses, doctors, plumbers, and many more positions that AI won’t easily replace, are seeing retirements happen faster than they can be replaced.

So part one of the change is simple to see, and that’s workforce shortages. The other part of this wave is these same Gen X’ers taking on different jobs. People retiring in their late 50’s and early 60’s are not all going to leave the workforce completely. This will happen for a couple reasons.

They won’t leave because their pensions need to be subsidized to live the life they want to live, and they won’t leave because work gives meaning to a lot of them… being productive is important in feeling young and staying healthy. Some of these people will continue working in their old fields after receiving there pension, ‘double-dipping’ and earning both a pension and also doing their old job part time. But others will go into whole new fields.

This is a part of the wave that is undefined and even exciting. I think you are going to see an increase in ‘creatives’ who are going to be 55+ in age. Older social media influencers, and artists, and producers of creative content. You’ll see novelists whose first best seller was written after the author turned 60. You’ll see short, clever, high quality filmmaking and storytelling. You’ll see new companies going viral with first-time CEO’s and entrepreneurs who are also senior citizens.

When Gen X retires they are going to ‘hit different’. Then again they are a generation that seemed to define themselves as different all along. I’m excited to see how they hit retirement are redefine it in the coming years.

Anywhere in the world

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If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you go?

If it were just up to me, and I got to choose (because I’m not sure my wife would agree), then these are the places I’d consider:

Barcelona: I don’t speak Spanish, and languages are not easy for me, but I loved the ‘livability’ of this city. It’s made for pedestrians, not cars, and I loved how the outdoor spaces were extensions of the indoor spaces. I was there in the winter and believe that if I went to visit in the summer I’d never want to leave.

The Caribbean: My Bajan roots run deep, and I’d love to live on an island. That said, I wonder if it would be too ‘small town’ for me? I haven’t spend much time there in the latter part of my life, and while there is a romanticized sense of appeal, I’m not convinced I’d want to live in the Caribbean as much as I’d like to visit more frequently.

Costa Rica: A favourite family holiday destination. Maybe that’s the appeal. Like the Caribbean, I don’t know if this is more of a holiday destination or a retirement destination, but everything about my trip there tells me that I want to spend more time there in the future.

Thailand: The people are so nice, and the country is beautiful. I enjoyed the Philippines as well, but the Philippines felt more like a holiday destination. Having lived in China, I don’t know if I’d go back there to live, although there are many more destinations in China to visit, yet Thailand has a feel more like ‘home’.

Australia: I’ve never been, but everything I hear about this wonderful country tells me that I could grow roots there.

Places I still want to explore: These aren’t places I necessarily want to live because I don’t know what I don’t know about them, but I really want to visit Italy, Portugal, Croatia and other Balkan countries, and Taiwan. There are also so many more places in the world that I want to visit: Countries in South America and Africa, India, Iceland, and many European countries are all on my wish list, but these again are holiday destinations for me until I actually visit them and can make a more informed decision.

I don’t know if any of these appeal to my wife, and the reality is that unless one or both of our daughters leave BC, Canada, it’s likely this will remain my wife and I’s home location. Still it’s nice to dream about possible places to live, and right now these are the places that have the most appeal to me… maybe I’ll revisit this in a few years, and if not a final destination, perhaps these can be long-term visit locations for my wife and I during retirement.

Where would you want to live? And why?

Retirement horizon

Last night I went to our district principal’s retirement celebration. This was the first time I went to this yearly event while actually thinking about my own retirement on the horizon. I still have at least a few more years to go, but I have to say that seeing this event from the lens of my own retirement was a unique experience.

I don’t know what I’ll do with my time when I retire, but talking to the retired folk at last night’s celebration, not too many of them seem to feel they have more time on their hands than they know what to do with. I know I won’t fully retire, I will find some way to continue working, even if it’s just dedicating more time to writing.

What I do know is that I still see things I can do to make a difference in my current job, and looming retirement or not, I have a job to do and it takes effort to do it well. Still, it’s fun to dream about what the next adventure could hold, and I’m looking forward to that horizon a little more than I have in the past.

Ripples over time

Facebook reminded me that I just recently passed 14 years since moving from teaching to administration. My FB memory led me to reread this post, Ripples and Tidal Waves, which I wrote 2 weeks after my promotion. I had so many things that came together at that time, which led to me being a presenter at Alan November’s conference a couple years running. I was even toying with the idea to go and work for Alan. How different my life would be now if that was a wave I chose to ride!

Looking back to that point, I had no idea what was in store for me. Living in China for 2 years? Not even a consideration back then, but I did just that a year and a half later. Co-founding a public, inquiry based school? Not on the radar. The only thing I can say that was expected is that I’d still be blogging all these years later.

We never know how circumstances and decisions will end up rippling and leading us to different opportunities and challenges, but we are fortunate when we can look back to a point in our careers 14 years ago and think, “This has been a great journey I’ve been on!” From here, I have less than 1/2 this time until I retire, and so I’m left wondering what ripples lie before me? Retirement for me will not mean gardening or golfing, and I can’t sit still for too long, so in the next few years I need to look for the ripples that come my way… or I need to make them.