Hello! I hope you have been having fun brainstorming, and adding to, your list of things you want to do when you retire. Remember to not judge anything that pops into your head…go ahead and write it down! You aren’t committed to anything in that notebook….but you never know just what idea(s) will be golden for you!
Today, though, I am going to switch gears away from creating our list, and talk about the reasons why I, at least, realized I NEEDED my list.
As my mindset started to shift into “this is getting real, now…I think this is only about 2 years away!” I was excited! The fact that I expected to retire in less than 2 years at that time, came up in my conversations with people. Some of those people were already retired, and they said “oh that’s exciting!” Some of those people were farther away from that milestone than I was at the time, and they said “oh, that’s great…” with less enthusiasm. As I said last time, I know that is because they were wistfully wishing they could be saying the same! I get it! But then the next question almost inevitably from either of those types of people was, “So, what are you going to do when you retire?”
Wow that was a loaded question for me! Because that is when I realized it wasn’t just that I wasn’t going to be going to a job every day… there was going to be a lot of time to fill up!
So, I usually came up with the lame, standard answers of “travel more, see my grandchildren more…” etc. All worthy goals, but really, I did NOT expect to travel to exotic places every other week and see my children and grandchildren in the weeks in between! I love my children and grandchildren, but I don’t want to wear out my welcome with them by clinging too much, either! I want us all to be excited to see each other when we get together, and not have anyone thinking “here we go again!” LOL!
That is why I realized I wanted better answers to give people to that question “what are you going to do?” I needed to get beyond my brain freeze when I couldn’t come up with those fleeting thoughts I had had over the years, but never wrote down. That meant I had to think about it and take an action to preserve those thoughts and keep on doing that, so that those thoughts were ready for me when it was time to IMPLEMENT!
And now, I am only a few months from that time, so my excitement is REALLY growing now!
I hope my sharing this reason will help you find your reason to brainstorm!
Take care,
Mary