I’ve had my fair share of Monday blues during a 40-plus-year career. That negative feeling can creep in on a Sunday night when you are faced with the prospect of starting another work week. The anticipation of work-related stress, tight schedules, and what can seem like never-ending demands on your time has driven me into a mental funk more than once.
Whether through a better attitude, greater appreciation, or simply becoming more efficient at what I do, I’ve always found a way to power through and embrace the week ahead. With retirement on the horizon, I have also half-jokingly reminded myself, “Well, I don’t have to do this forever.”
Yet, somewhere along the way, that comforting thought began to have the opposite effect. It opened my mind to seriously considering what my post-career life would look like when there was no Monday morning schedule waiting for me. The Monday blues started being replaced by something I hadn't expected: retirement gloom.
I don’t define retirement gloom as anything as serious as depression. For me, it is more a sense of unease about the unknown and the radically different way I will use my time when work no longer dictates so much of it. Rather than wait until retirement to figure that out, I’ve challenged myself to better understand who I am beyond my career, create a new lifestyle structure, and experiment while I am still working to discover what I want my retirement life to look like.
I am very mindful of my use of time. Typically, I work north of forty-eight hours a week in my current position and try to get about seven hours of sleep a night. That means my job currently occupies more than 40 percent of my waking hours. At some point, I am going to become responsible for deciding what to do with all that time.
As noted in an AMAC article, “Important Intel for Working Seniors,” work provides older adults with “a sense of purpose, stimulation, social connection, and financial security.”
I can nod my head along with every one of those. Which is why I am working now to build an identity that encompasses both my professional and personal life. I am defining a purpose that can continue regardless of whether I am working. I have a bucket list and long-term goals that give me things to anticipate and pursue. As a natural introvert, I am pushing myself to proactively spend time with the people in my personal life now rather than assuming those relationships will simply fill the void when I stop working. I am also blessed to have had parents who pushed me to save for retirement early, which has given me a sense of financial confidence as I think about what comes next.
Knowing I need to fill my time does not make it any easier to define the lifestyle I want to lead. Because I am driven professionally, my wife is constantly challenging me with a simple but powerful question: “What are you going to do when you don’t have to create an annual business strategy?”
As a Certified Professional Retirement Coach, one of the exercises I use is the creation of an average retirement week. Ironically, it continues to be one of my most difficult personal tasks. To stare at a blank calendar and then try to create meaning in the open spaces has been, for me, a never-ending process.
But it is not wasted time. I now have an imperfect but adaptable lifestyle plan that aligns with my life purpose. I expect it to continue changing as retirement gets closer and probably after I retire. I don't need to have every hour figured out. Having a sense of how I want to live gives me a lot of peace.
Another two-word question that has entered our vernacular is, “Why wait?” As mentioned earlier, I have a bucket list, and my wife and I have our joint experience list. For a long time, I looked at them as an aspirational inventory of activities to be pursued at some point in the future when I had the time. Not anymore.
One of our key shared goals is to see our children and grandson more frequently. Living in different parts of the country, I have tended to use the “work” excuse to complicate the planning. This year, I have been more intentional about flipping the script and challenging myself to make the time. As a result, we will see our kids more this year than at any point in the last five.
The Monday blues will occasionally creep back, sometimes on a Saturday when I have to travel. Retirement gloom can also take hold, particularly when I look at our portfolio after a bad month in the market.
Yet, I am no longer obsessed with trying to have my post-career life completely figured out when I watch the sunrise on my first day of retirement. What I will have is a better understanding of who I am and what I want to be because of the life I have imperfectly planned, knowing it aligns with a long-established financial strategy.
Perhaps that is the biggest lesson my retirement gloom has taught me. I don’t have to wait until I retire to start preparing for retirement. And I certainly don’t have to wait to start living it.
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