My aha moment came many weeks, months, after my retirement last year. I realized it after 56 years of working as a paralegal/legal secretary for the same firm my boss retired and the office closed. It is hard to break old habits, like cleaning at night and on weekends, never having any free time without feeling guilty, and being able to have some free time for myself. My aha moment came when one day many months later I realized, while I was on a road trip with a friend, that I didn’t have any real-time constraints other than my family needing me to come back for things such as cleaning, cooking, driving grandkids around, you know, the usual. We were driving along and I thought aha, I am on my own at this moment and don’t have to go to work. No one was expecting me to get out a will, do divorce papers, real estate documents, correspondence, and the list goes on. First of all, I felt I am too young to retire. I am 75 years old. I am in good health, good mind on most days, and am energetic. I love to see and greet people, and I really liked my job as a paralegal. So, to just up and stop what I had been doing all this time was, to say the least interesting, relaxing, and confusing all at the same time…
Retirement is great, even though I really haven’t figured it out yet. The process put me behind doing all those things you say you want to do when you have time, but no time to do them. The truth, I believe, we never really wanted to do them in the first place. These projects include updating my paperwork, organizing my house, getting our reno cabin items painted, etc. But, with time I am getting it. (How to piss away a day). It is also winter and actually that is good. It keeps me focused in fewer places than my love of the outside in the summer.
Whenever I see an ad for a legal secretary or something in that field, I think, “Maybe I should try out for that”. That’s when my aha moment hits me again. I am retired and should be doing other things that I never could do before for lack of time. I find that I still clean at night as that is what you do when you work and have not got on any schedule which I am told I am supposed to do. Did I mention that I hate schedules? That was the hardest part of working, having to do things on a schedule. I sure accomplished a lot of things on that schedule. Now I basically can do what I want and if I want. At the present time, I am not doing too well at accomplishing what I feel I need to get done.
Anyways, my aha moment is a life-altering transition from one busy schedule to just another. Also, for me, I feel the mind is 30, but the body is 80. My aha moment of retirement is a (life-changing event) and is still in the process of being figured out.
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