Eschew Obfuscation: Retirement Stress

Retirement Stress

Max Dunn — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 10:11:00 -0800

People sometimes ask if it is relaxing being retired. Interestingly, it isn’t.

Some days I work harder now than I did when I had a traditional job. Whether it is re-doing the plumbing in our bathroom, setting up a Linux email server, helping a friend start a business, or developing a registration form for our son’s baseball league using Ruby on Rails, I have been incredibly busy.

What is different is that now I have more control over what I do and when. For instance, if I want to take a nap or bike ride in the middle of the day, I do it. Or if I want to spend time researching open source software, well, I can do that too.

So while being retired hasn’t really been all that relaxing, the big difference is that it has been a lot less stressful.

"Retirement Stress" by Max Dunn SR

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 18:28:25 -0800

I don’t like to be asked “how is retirement” I don’t want to be considered as “retired” So, when I am asked I tell the questioner all the things I am doing that qualifies me as not retired

"Retirement Stress" by Max

Sat, 03 Dec 2005 11:30:14 -0800

Hi Eileen, thanks for taking a look at my blog. :-)

When I think of “relaxing” I think of lying on the couch watching TV, or reading a book, or having a glass of wine and talking with my wife.

But when I am busy all day long going surfing, bike riding, working on a web site, writing a blog, researching open source software, etc, I don’t think of this as “relaxing” since I am busy and working. However, these things are certainly not “stressful” to me, because I can choose to do them or not. And when I get tired of it, I can just do something else.

Now last week we had a deadline of getting the TriCities Baseball web site up by Thursday. So I was pushing to get this done, and it was a little stressful. But that was nothing compared to the stress that I was under in my old job when I was doing a lot of things I didn’t like to do, working with people that were often difficult to deal with, and feeling like I wasn’t able to improve my situation.

Hope that helps explain the difference. :-)

"Retirement Stress" by Eileen

Sat, 03 Dec 2005 02:12:00 -0800

Hey Max, What’s the difference between relaxing and less stressful????? :)