For most of my working life, retirement was somewhere in the distance.

I spent years working away from home, first on oil platforms in the North Sea and later on projects around the world. There were plenty of good times, but there were also airports, hotel rooms, long flights and months when home seemed a very long way away.

There was always a reason for doing it.

One day I would retire.

That was the deal I thought I'd made with life. Work hard while I was able, put something away for the future, and eventually reach the point where I could stop worrying about the next project and start enjoying everything I'd worked for.

The Future I Thought I'd Planned

My wife and I had talked about what we'd do when that day came. We would sell the guest house in Scotland and travel the world together. No more having to be somewhere on Monday morning. No more working away. We'd finally have the freedom we'd spent years waiting for.

At least, that was the plan.

The problem with plans involving two people is that both of you have to still want the same thing when the time comes.

When Two People Want Different Futures

As retirement got closer, I began to realise that the future I'd been picturing wasn't necessarily the future my wife wanted anymore. She enjoyed running the guest house. Although it was up for sale, offers came and went, and I could see what was happening.

Deep down, she didn't really want to sell it.

That left me with a decision I hadn't expected to face.

Did I stay and spend my retirement involved in a business that had never really been my life, simply because it was easier than changing everything? Or did I accept that the retirement I'd imagined for years might not exist?

I wish I could tell you I handled everything brilliantly from that point onwards.

I didn't.

What followed eventually included the end of my marriage, depression, far too much drinking, travelling partly because I didn't know what else to do with myself, and periods when I genuinely wondered what the hell had happened to the life I thought I was going to have.

The Part of Retirement Nobody Prepared Me For

That's the strange thing about retirement nobody had ever mentioned to me.

I'd spent years preparing financially to stop working. I hadn't spent five minutes preparing myself for what would happen if the life waiting for me afterwards wasn't the one I'd planned.

Work gives you more than a wage. It gives you structure. It gives you somewhere you're expected to be. In my case, it had also given me responsibility, problems to solve and people who depended on me to get things done.

Then one day that stops.

If everything else in your life is solid, perhaps that's wonderful.

If it isn't, retirement can leave you with an awful lot of time to think.

Retirement Wasn't the Finish Line

I'm 63 now, and when I look back, I no longer see retirement as the finish line.

It was a junction.

I just didn't know it at the time.

The road I expected to take disappeared, and for quite a while I was completely bloody lost. But that same road eventually took me to places I might never otherwise have seen, experiences I would never have had and, ultimately, to Tobago.

And Tobago brought Ann-Marie into my life.

So would I choose to go through all of it again?

That's a harder question than people might think. There are parts of those years I wouldn't wish on anybody.

But I do know this.

When the future you've spent years planning suddenly disappears, it can feel as though your life has disappeared with it.

It hasn't.

You may simply be standing at a junction you never expected to reach.

I certainly was.

And sometimes the road you never planned to take turns out to be the one that takes you where you were supposed to be going all along.

— Billy