audreyh1
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
We've had a few casual discussions of phases in retirement in other threads about life changes, and I think it warrants it's own thread as I see a major transition unfolding in my own retired life right now.
When we made the decision to buy a house, it dawned on me that the time we spent full-time RVing — about 5 years — was almost exactly half the time we have been retired — 10 years. And looking back it seems that each of those periods were definite phases and that we are now transitioning into our third phase. Rich in Tampa mentioned that he has seen phases like that in his life (although he hasn't retired yet).
Now I'm noticing an even stronger pattern on a longer cycle (perhaps). The first 10 years of our retirement was almost exclusively dominated by nature travel and nature photography. Over the past year or two, an old interest of mine has gradually returned to the forefront - "foodie" is perhaps the best description, or cooking & learning to cook fine cuisine. This now seems to have become at least as important as the nature stuff and a lot of my near term planning is focused on this.
Part of the motivation for buying a house was my frustration with an inadequate kitchen (RV) as my interest in cooking has returned with a vengeance and I started really missing having a "real" kitchen, and I fantasized about having a larger more versatile grill.
I also think that some of our future travel will be more cuisine and cooking class oriented and not exclusively nature travel like it has been for the past 10 years.
Can't explain why the cooking thing is so important, but it is pretty strongly "in the blood" from the maternal side of my family.
Anyway, I thought it might be useful to describe some of these phase transitions I seem to be going through. That it might be helpful to folks contemplating retirement and looking at it as a big blank space of self-directed time to realize that they will probably be going through a sequence of phases too. That you don't figure it out all at once, and that you don't get stuck in a rut doing the same old forever either. I think that with the longer retirement timeline that an ER is able to enjoy (with luck - finger's crossed for life, money and good health) a series of phases should be expected.
Audrey
When we made the decision to buy a house, it dawned on me that the time we spent full-time RVing — about 5 years — was almost exactly half the time we have been retired — 10 years. And looking back it seems that each of those periods were definite phases and that we are now transitioning into our third phase. Rich in Tampa mentioned that he has seen phases like that in his life (although he hasn't retired yet).
Now I'm noticing an even stronger pattern on a longer cycle (perhaps). The first 10 years of our retirement was almost exclusively dominated by nature travel and nature photography. Over the past year or two, an old interest of mine has gradually returned to the forefront - "foodie" is perhaps the best description, or cooking & learning to cook fine cuisine. This now seems to have become at least as important as the nature stuff and a lot of my near term planning is focused on this.
Part of the motivation for buying a house was my frustration with an inadequate kitchen (RV) as my interest in cooking has returned with a vengeance and I started really missing having a "real" kitchen, and I fantasized about having a larger more versatile grill.
I also think that some of our future travel will be more cuisine and cooking class oriented and not exclusively nature travel like it has been for the past 10 years.
Can't explain why the cooking thing is so important, but it is pretty strongly "in the blood" from the maternal side of my family.
Anyway, I thought it might be useful to describe some of these phase transitions I seem to be going through. That it might be helpful to folks contemplating retirement and looking at it as a big blank space of self-directed time to realize that they will probably be going through a sequence of phases too. That you don't figure it out all at once, and that you don't get stuck in a rut doing the same old forever either. I think that with the longer retirement timeline that an ER is able to enjoy (with luck - finger's crossed for life, money and good health) a series of phases should be expected.
Audrey