I am a reasonably empathetic person, but one thing I just cannot begin to understand is the people who are like "Please help, I retired and have no idea what to do"
I could list 100 ways to spend a day, or a week, or a month if I had no obligations and enough money to comfortably cover my living expenses.
I have at least 5 hobbies and interests that I could spend 5 hours a day on for decades. I would go to all the parks in my state. In fact all the parks in the country. I would pick up beekeeping, or birdwatching, or badminton. I would read 3000 books. I would write a book. I would play video games. I would volunteer. If I was lazy I would sleep till noon and watch Netflix.
At absolutely no point would I EVER be like "man I just can't figure out what to do with myself"
Are these people just the most boring and unimaginative people out there? Am I missing something? Has the corporate life sucked out every drop of individuality and curiosity from them?
Am I the only one who is baffled by these types of posts:
byu/nuttedpre infinancialindependence
Posted by nuttedpre
19 Comments
Eventually, everything becomes boring
Most of what you see on social media is just bait of some kind or other.
I imagine a lot of them have their identity far too entwined with whatever their previous career was.
Yeah, you’re being unrealistic. I suggest you actually try being retired and see where it gets you. If you’re “young”, all your friends are still working, it’s hard to motivate yourself to do stuf constantly, a lot of people get most of their socialization which is generally necessary for human happiness from work.
And on and on. I kind of go crazy when I have a month off of work and money is no issue, and the problem is not that I have nothing to do, it’s that I have so much to do I’d rather just do nothing. Now imagine that’s not just a month, it’s for the rest of your life. If you’re not the right type of person and highly internally motivated…that’s going to be very hard for you.
OP… how old are you and what are you 5 hobbies?
I totally agree, those people are nuts. Even worse are working people who can’t imagine retirement because “I don’t know what I would do with myself.” Really? You can’t function without someone telling you what to do?
It’s difficult for many people to start doing a task. Any hobby is a task. I can sit at my PC all day wanting to play a game, but the clicking steam open and starting the game is too much effort. So I’m just wasting time on reddit, kinda wanting to play the game but never getting around to it.
This is just clicking.
Starting moving to get to a real life hobby is 1000 times more demanding than just clicking. A lot of people really struggle to start up the activity. Even if they enjoy it every time, and they feel very happy they finally did it after they did it. It still is an internal battle every day to actually start the activity.
Have you never felt like this?
For some people like me, this is always. Every day of our entire life, starting any activity feels like an internal battle and a struggle, no matter how pleasant the activity feels and how happy you are afterwards
Are you already RE, or still working?
100%. I was a sahm for 20 years and had plenty of hobbies and interests even after my son was in school all day. I am only working now because my financial situation changed but I hope I can retire again soon.
I retired 1.5 years ago at the age of 57, and it’s glorious.
Things I’m currently doing: line dancing, ballroom dancing, bachata lessons (more dancing), making jewelry, selling jewelry at craft fair, serving on a planning committee for craft fair, making stained glass, brushing up on Spanish. Oh, and I’m serving as an advisor for my daughter’s a capella singing group in college.
I’m also caring for my elderly mother whose health is declining.
Spouse and I take one international vacation per year, typically for 1-3 months. And lots of road trips.
when u have all the time you could possibly want, its not easy to pick what to do. as someone else pointed out, most socialization today comes from being at work. take that away, and its easy to be very very alone and out of loop with society. that gets depressing very quickly. it then becomes a “whats the point of anything anyways”. personally, i enjoy gardening or cooking but eventually it gets very lonely when u realize you dont have others to share your time with
I mean, compared to most jobs, I’d rather stay home, watch tv, read some books, do chores, etc. Work is by and large more boring than most “nothing” you could do. I’m with you, OP.
I still try to help those folks out, though. Because a lot of them likely just don’t know how to make friends in general. Which is something a lot of folks have trouble doing, retired or not.
When I see these thoughts I just think damn just go back to work then. Do you not know how to explore different hobbies? May sound harsh but if you really don’t know how to look for things to do then you might as well go back to work.
Lots of folks live their lives on cruise control. Often it is consumed by work and minimal thought is done on living an ideal life without work.
Boring people get bored
I think it’s hard to relate when your current life experience is still in the 9-5 “rat race,” and I think it’s natural to believe that if only we didn’t have to spend 40 hours a week working for income, we’d do all of these fulfilling things.
But from what I’ve read, and seen first hand with family members who’ve retired, the reality ends up being very different.
We like to believe that if we didn’t have to work, we’d finally learn to play the piano, or learn some Spanish and vacation in Latin America, or spend a year visiting as many national parks as we can and really mastering landscape photography.
But then a year or two goes by, and we realize we instead just wasted our time binging Netflix and scrolling social media. Then we realize that it wasn’t work that was keeping us from doing all of those things we aspired to do – it was us all along. Deep down, we’re lazy procrastinators. And that realization can cause some serious mental distress for people. It can manifest as depression or anxiety, and it’s hard to deal with.
So people reach out online for help. But instead of admitting they have serious issues, they downplay it, and frame it as a casual request for “What should I do now (to feel fulfilled)?”
I am with you, OP. I never have enough time for my hobbies.
I think some people just work, watch TV, and scroll on their phones.
Personally I’m with you. There’s about a gazillion things I’d love to do with my days other than work for a paycheck. The world has no shortage of places to go, things to experience, skills to master, ways to engage with the community, opportunities for personal fulfillment, etc. The only thing stopping me from doing all that now is the 8+ hours I have to spend doing shit I don’t want to be doing because I need to not-starve.
I’m lucky and privileged enough to have enough PTO that I get a taste of it every now and then, and there’s nothing more painful than having to log back into slack after spending a couple of weeks actually living life freely instead of sitting on on yet another meeting that I don’t need to be a part of.
What I suspect is that the venn diagram of “People who are able to achieve FIRE” and “People who are very career focused” probably has a lot of overlap. You do have to be sort of driven to land yourself the kind of career that comes with a paycheck big enough such that you can pursue something like this.
I have a feeling I might have the same problem when I retire after being a software engineer and really living problem solving. I like a big challenge, so one of my fears is I won’t have some big problem to solve when it comes time to retire.
45 now, so not sure I will feel the same way come 55-60, but it is a concern. Luckily my wife and I have done well financially and money won’t be an issue, and we want to travel a lot, so this concern is most likely unfounded.