Interesting discussion/article.
I am (hopefully) 4-6 years away from ER. It has been my observation that there are 2 kinds of people. People who's job is (intentionally or otherwise) the center of their life, and those who's job is just a necessary part of it. And differentiating those kinds of people is pretty easy just by watching what they do with their time away from work.
I am a do'er. I have at least 10 projects going on at any point in time. Home improvement and in my hobby of restoring antique cars ( I currently have 3). Also, I started a web business 10 years ago making some parts for old cars. It is purely a hobby, it is all "fun" money, and I don't have to do it at all (but it has sent me to Europe every 2 years, business class, to take part in international vintage car caravans!).
I watch about 15 minutes of the nightly news each night and that is about all the TV I watch. My wife has to drag me to go see a movie (although I usually enjoy them once I am there). I LOVE to travel, both "resort" travel, and adventure travel. When I get home from work, I usually check e-mail, then spend the rest of the evening (except for dinner) tinkering in my shop. In the warmer months, I'll take one of my cars for a drive... to nowhere, just because.
My point? People like me can't wait to retire, because we KNOW what we will be doing. We will be doing what we do now, just lots more of it (except that working part). And it sometimes scares us, because some of this stuff costs MONEY. Money that we might not be spending now.
Then there are the other people. I know of and see a lot of them. they get excited about retirement, talk about all the time that they will have, but a year or two in, they have no idea what to do with themselves. Before retirement, their non-work time was their retirement, and they used it being sedate, watching TV, reading, just doing not much of nothing (and nothing wrong with that). But in retirement, trying to do that 24/7 doesn't work. They often lack a sense of purpose, get bored, depressed, etc. Some go back to work just to have some structure in their lives.
My guess is that there are not many of these kinds of people here in the ER forums. People who retire early are generally driven, focused and are able to put their "careers" in one place in their lives, and not let it BE their lives.
In corporate America, you hear the term "Work-Life Balance" a lot. that annoys me. Since when is "work" not part of your life? It is. It is a PART of your life not all of it. Life= work + time not working.
I have been focused for a LONG time, personally, to try to retire in my 50s. Aside from surviving parenthood, it is the single biggest challenge of my life, but recently doing some math, it all looks very do-able. And posititive.
I may be my own worst enemy in retirement, as I tend to have high expectations of what I will accomplish... and I need to focus on accomplishing rest and relaxation as well.
/rant
