Feeling Empty after early retirement

[FIREd]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ziggy29 ...which makes your presence on an early retirement board more than a little odd....

He is just trying to save us lost souls...

Me? I am just in the second week of the death spiral and loving every minute of the ride to the bottom...

[REWahoo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ziggy29 ...which makes your presence on an early retirement board more than a little odd....

Hey, if you can't do it, rail at those who can.

[dex]

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Originally Posted by oilspill Life of laziness is a wicked curse. You'll get fat, you'll get bored. You'll develop bad habits. Better to find some meaningful work to do to rescue yourself from what could be a death spiral.

That is a possibility.

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Originally Posted by oilspill I'm one of the few on here who advocate against early retirement for the sake of early retirement. Retire if you're sick, but never if you are healthy. Get back to work even if all you could find is unpaid work.

ER can be the dream of a 'tropical island' to get away from the stress of work and day to day life. That is not a positive motivation.

Successful ER is work. I think it is difficult to Americans because of the work ethic, competitiveness and that we are trained to work from an early age.

Also, ER is not a destination but a journey that begins when work stops.

Sometimes, I think my happiness days were when I a teenager 15-19 when I went to school during the days and worked in a supermarket stocking shelves for 30 hours/wk during school and 40 during the summer. The work was made more bearable for me due to my hope for a better future than the adults that did it for a living. I think that combination of volunteering (work) and education is appealing to me.

Oilspill, stick around, people need to hear your point of view.

[flyfishnevada]

Quote:

Originally Posted by oilspill Life of laziness is a wicked curse. You'll get fat, you'll get bored. You'll develop bad habits. Better to find some meaningful work to do to rescue yourself from what could be a death spiral. I'm one of the few on here who advocate against early retirement for the sake of early retirement. Retire if you're sick, but never if you are healthy. Get back to work even if all you could find is unpaid work.

I can't disagree with oilspill's sentiments, but who says work has to be a job. You can volunteer, work at a new skill, do something you love that might even make some money. Retirement isn't the time you shut down and coast to a hopefully peaceful passing form this world. Retirement is your chance to do what you want, when you want, solely for your pleasure. It's when you get to exit the rat race, stop working for the man, etc. and pursue your dreams. Just because your new retirement activities aren't "productive", doesn't mean they aren't important to you. Travel can be your ";work". Or it could be restoring old cars, scrapbooking or any number of things working people call hobbies. If it's important to you, it's important. Retirement doesn't mean not working, it means not working for others. Find your sweet spot and go for it. Being lazy, watching TV and disengaging from life isn't the recipe for a successful ER. However, staying in a job that is less than fulfilling, stressful and is consuming your life just for the sake of not retiring isn't good for you either.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dex Successful ER is work. I think it is difficult to Americans because of the work ethic, competitiveness and that we are trained to work from an early age.

Right! Planning should begin years before you actual FIRE. Continuing to plan, adjust and adapt is necessary once you have FIRE'd. A meaningful retirement takes work. Fortunately, it's fun work.

[M Paquette]

Quote:

Originally Posted by oilspill Life of laziness is a wicked curse. You'll get fat, you'll get bored. You'll develop bad habits. Better to find some meaningful work to do to rescue yourself from what could be a death spiral.

Yeah, it's terrible to be retired. Heck, since I retired I've lost 40 pounds, gotten my blood pressure under control, and have finally had the time to get a bunch of other health issues taken care of. Yepper, a real death spiral.

Your mistake here, among others, is to assume that being retired is the same as being lazy. It's not. Being retired means that I'm in control of my life, schedule, and activities, without having to answer to anyone else.

Quote:

Originally Posted by oilspill I'm one of the few on here who advocate against early retirement for the sake of early retirement. Retire if you're sick, but never if you are healthy. Get back to work even if all you could find is unpaid work.

Yet, some of us might want to do something besides work while we are healthy enough to enjoy such activities. Retiring to one's sick bed isn't really much of a retirement plan. You're welcome to follow your advice, of course, but please don't presume that your 'work til you're too sick to go on' plan is appropriate for the rest of us.

You should keep on working as long as possible, of course. I plan on living a long time, and I'll need your Medicare and SS contributions to keep me comfy.

[harley]

Quote:

Originally Posted by oilspill Life of laziness is a wicked curse. You'll get fat, you'll get bored. You'll develop bad habits. Better to find some meaningful work to do to rescue yourself from what could be a death spiral. I'm one of the few on here who advocate against early retirement for the sake of early retirement. Retire if you're sick, but never if you are healthy. Get back to work even if all you could find is unpaid work.

I got fat and bored when I was working, but I'm better now.

As far as bad habits, those are the result of a life time of effort, and I'm not quitting now.

[Midpack]

Quote:

Originally Posted by oilspill I'm one of the few on here who advocate against early retirement for the sake of early retirement. Retire if you're sick, but never if you are healthy. Get back to work even if all you could find is unpaid work.

I am a little on the fence myself, and we're not entirely alone, even here.

[Purron]

Quote:

Originally Posted by oilspill Life of laziness is a wicked curse. You'll get fat, you'll get bored. You'll develop bad habits. Better to find some meaningful work to do to rescue yourself from what could be a death spiral. I'm one of the few on here who advocate against early retirement for the sake of early retirement. Retire if you're sick, but never if you are healthy. Get back to work even if all you could find is unpaid work.

I'm cool with you having this opinion for yourself or for some people. I'm not cool with applying this to everyone. "Never if you are healthy" (emphasis added) is such a broad generalization. I don't believe we've ever met let alone gotten to know each other well enough for you to tell me how I should live my life.

[REWahoo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by oilspill Retire if you're sick, but never if you are healthy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by oilspill In this world people will try to tell you that you can't or shouldn't do a lot of things yourself.

Yep.

[NW-Bound]

Quote:

Retire if you're sick, but never if you are healthy.

Does it count if one is sick of work?

[bbbamI]

My momma told me on occasion she was sick AND tired..

[NW-Bound]

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Originally Posted by bbbamI My momma told me on occasion she was sick AND tired..

Sick and tired of work like this guy?

Most of us will probably never pull a Steven Slater: curse out a customer, grab a drink and leave our place of employment in a blaze of glory.

But let’s face it, we’ve all had the urge.

Slater, a flight attendant on JetBlue, instantly became a folk hero in many people’s eyes Monday after he grabbed a microphone and ranted at a passenger who had refused to apologize for hitting Slater with some luggage. Slater then grabbed a beer from the galley and fled the plane via the emergency exit chute.

More details are here: Many see JetBlue worker as hero - Business - Your retirement - msnbc.com

[scrabbler1]

For many people including myself, a big benefit to being FIREd is being rid of the negative things about working. For me, that meant getting rid of the long, tiring, and sickening commute even two days a week. It, along with the morning routine of scrambling around to get to the train on time made me nauseous (i.e. sick) most of the time in the last years of working. Also, working even P/T was preventing me from pursuing more fully the other things I had been doing on weekdays for several years.

So, I improved my life by being FIREd by removing negatives as well as adding actual positives. Got that, Oilspill?

[TooFrugal]

Happybee27, I think I can relate a bit to what you are going through. I went through a bit of the same thing when I left the corporate world. In my case I quit work when my kids were little. I went from a large staff and a corner office to being an unemployed housewife who had to schedule doctor's appointments around the teenage babysitter's cheerleading practice schedule.

Initially I joined a lot of clubs and made nonworking friends and then eventually started my own business. Now I would be really sad if I ever had to go back to having a real job with set hours, but initially it took some getting used to.

If much of your life has evolved around going to school for a certain career and then climbing the corporate ladder, it is a huge switch to have that change overnight. Probably more so if it wasn't your decision.

I think having kids getting out of high school is also a transition point because your time outside of work for the last couple of decades was spent on kids, sports, scouts, music lessons, orthodontic appointments, etc. Lots of your social contacts outside of work were probably your kids' friends' parents. My husband and I have actually been planning for this by joining different hobby and social groups as our kids are getting older and more independent. It is hard to keep up with the groups because we are both still working and both kids are still at home, but we have started making friends with shared interests other than kids' sports teams or scout groups.

With leaving your job and your kids transitioning off to college you are being hit with two life changing events at one time. My advice would be to hang in there, look for a job if you want or else keep busy as others have suggested doing volunteer work, joining clubs, start a business, write a book, etc.

[bbbamI]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NW-Bound Sick and tired of work like this guy?

Not exactly..at the time she was not working outside our home.

I think she was referring to me and my shenanigans...

[Mickslick]

I struggled with the lack of structure and a sense of purpose too when I first ER'd, no problem now, for me, I had to reprogram my brain. Remember, retiring before 50, puts you in about 1 to 2% of the population, the other 98% are typically either angry or jealous that you found a way out, or they are hopelessly lost in societal and familial programing and cant comprehend anything other than being a meaningless cog in the corporate machine, especially if you are male

Just saying, that some of your issues might be more related to you feeling the pressures of society and others rather than the fact that you now have control over your destiny, get past this and your whole outlook and daily activity may dramatically change for the better.

[Happybee27]

Quote:

Originally Posted by FIREdreamer He is just trying to save us lost souls... Me? I am just in the second week of the death spiral and loving every minute of the ride to the bottom...

Glad that you feel that way, start planning for longer term activities/goals before you get bored. I was having so much things to do in my first six months....jumped into things that I didn't have time to do before FIRE, have more time to smell the flowers. But the emptiness and bore...start get in when I completed my short term goals.
Hopefully I will get out from the mode soon after considered all the great suggestion from the forum.

[Tigger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by scrabbler1 Got that, Oilspill?

I believe the oilspill has been contained.

Tigger - trying not to be curious about bbbamI's shenanigans

[Kroeran]

I wonder if its like suffering from a nutritional deficiency....its tough to figure out just precisely what one is missing

so from work we get a whole range of things:
- money
- for some managers, power and ego support
- social interaction, albeit forced
- actual friendships
- pseudo relationships that camoflaugh our incapacity for authentic relationships
- healthy competition
- free source of school supplies ; - ) [just kidding]
- distraction from thinking about the meaning or purpose of our lives
- time away from spouse

So one approach is to add to this list and ponder and test each one, monitoring your emotional feedback to see if you can isolate the true causal factor of ennui.

Another tack is that boredom is the state that occurs when you successfully achieve a goal (its a good thing), and is the signal to reach for a higher or more meaningful goal, which probably should not be more materialism (but could be)...could be something more along the lines of finding five new authentic friends over a 12 month planning cycle.

One area I would pay attention to is ensuring that you don't become the boring grouchy wife at home, and that you be very careful through this period to conciously manage your husband's experience of being married to you.

Philosopher Epicure on Happiness:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20LTT...eature=related

goto youtube and search Philosophy: guide to happiness part 3 if this link is not working

his basic idea is that to be happy you need three things....
1) freedom from the tyranny of a boss
2) to be surrounded by authentic friendship
3) to live philisophically...the examined life

this is why most of us were much happier in school or college than working life...

[bbbamI]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tigger Tigger - trying not to be curious about bbbamI's shenanigans

Hmmmm.....ok....I'll give you at least one shenanigan...


http://www.early-retirement.org/foru...led-44592.html