For most of my working life, retirement was something I looked forward to without thinking too deeply about what it would actually feel like.
You work. You save what you can. You complain about Monday mornings and occasionally calculate how many years you've got left before you can finally tell the whole bloody lot of them to manage without you.
Then Eventually the Day Comes
Then eventually the day comes.
You're retired.
I always imagined there would be some great sense of arrival. Perhaps I'd wake up feeling different. Free, certainly. Maybe even slightly smug knowing that while everybody else was dragging themselves out of bed and heading to work, I could do whatever I pleased.
And for a while, that's exactly what it feels like.
No alarm clock.
No flight to catch.
No bag to pack.
No project waiting for me somewhere on the other side of the world.
Nobody ringing because something hasn't been finished, somebody hasn't turned up or some problem has suddenly become mine.
After years of being responsible for things, that silence can feel bloody wonderful.
The Ordinary Morning Nobody Talks About
But then comes an ordinary morning.
That's the one I don't think we talk about enough.
The excitement has worn off. You've told everybody you're retired. You've had the congratulations and probably a few jokes about putting your feet up. Perhaps you've had the holiday, tackled a few jobs around the house and enjoyed doing absolutely nothing without feeling guilty about it.
Then you wake up one morning and realise something.
Nobody is expecting you anywhere.
That sounds like the very definition of freedom.
And perhaps it is.
But freedom and purpose aren't quite the same thing.
Freedom and Purpose Aren't the Same Thing
For years, my working life had given me a structure I barely noticed while I had it. There was always somewhere I had to be and something I was responsible for. People depended on me to make decisions, solve problems and get things finished.
Sometimes I loved it.
Sometimes it drove me bloody mad.
But it gave my days a reason to start.
Then suddenly I could get up whenever I wanted.
Monday wasn't really Monday anymore.
Neither was Friday.
You spend half your working life wishing the weekend would hurry up, then retirement comes along and gives you seven of the bloody things every week.
It sounds perfect.
Until you realise that weekends only felt like weekends because there was something on the other side of them.
I don't think that means retirement is something to fear. Far from it. After a lifetime of working, you've earned the right to stop.
But perhaps we prepare for the wrong part of it.
We're very good at preparing financially.
Pensions. Savings. Mortgages. Houses. Investments. How much we'll need each month and whether we've got enough put away to last.
All important.
What Are You Going to Get Out of Bed For?
But nobody ever sat me down and asked:
What are you going to get out of bed for?
Not what are you going to do.
That's easy.
Golf. Gardening. Travelling. Fishing. DIY. Sitting somewhere warm with a cold beer and wondering why you didn't retire ten years earlier.
I mean something slightly different.
What will make you feel useful?
What will make Tuesday matter?
Who are you when the job title disappears?
I didn't have particularly good answers to those questions.
Perhaps that was partly because I'd spent so many years defining myself by what I did.
I worked in oil and gas. I ran projects. I solved problems. I travelled around the world because somebody somewhere needed something built, completed or sorted out.
Then one day none of that was required anymore.
I was still Billy.
I just had to work out what Billy did next.
It took me a lot longer than I expected.
And I certainly didn't follow a straight road getting there.
There were mistakes. There were some very dark periods. There were years when I probably looked as though I was enjoying retirement while, underneath it all, I hadn't the faintest bloody idea where my life was going.
You Might Not Be Finished Yet
Eventually, though, I learned something I wish I'd understood on that first morning.
Retirement doesn't have to mean retiring from being useful.
You don't need a company ID card or somebody paying you a salary to have a reason to get up.
You just need something that still matters to you.
I'm 63 now.
I'm supposedly retired.
Yet here I am writing books, building Billy's Books, working on ideas with Ann-Marie and probably spending more time trying to figure out how websites work than is sensible for a man who technically doesn't have to work at all.
The difference is that now I'm doing it because I choose to.
And perhaps that's the freedom I misunderstood all those years ago.
Retirement isn't the day you stop doing things.
It's the day you finally get the chance to decide which things are worth doing.
So when that first ordinary morning arrives and nobody is expecting you anywhere, enjoy it.
Make the coffee.
Turn the alarm off.
Sit there in your dressing gown until lunchtime if that's what you fancy.
You've earned that morning.
Just don't be surprised if, somewhere down the road, you find yourself looking for another reason to get out of bed.
It doesn't mean you've failed at retirement.
It might simply mean you're not finished yet.
— Billy