Retirement - 8 Weeks In
Despite being chained to a keyboard and compiler for almost forty years, I have not missed work at all. I don't miss the management nonsense, and surprisingly I don't miss the intellectual challenge of writing computer software. I have played around with my home lab a little, and written about twenty lines of Java to experiment with MQTT, but that's it. It's quite unsettling that I don't miss what was basically my life for five days a week for forty years. It makes me question whether perhaps I should have been doing something else for all that time.
The initial revelation was that I could do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted (subject to legal, financial and marital constraints, of course). I don't have to more the lawn at the weekend… I can do it on a Tuesday morning. In fact, I don't even have to mow all of it, because there's always tomorrow. That instantly makes doing necessary things I don't like, such as weeding the garden, much more palatable. They're no longer unwelcome tasks for the coming weekend; instead I can spend half an hour here and there, interspersed with doing something else, or indeed nothing at all.
I'm now at the stage where I'm losing track of what day it is. It really doesn't matter that much any more. Activities are largely governed by the weather or how I feel, for example how well I slept the night before. On that note, I do appear to be sleeping slightly better. I'm going to bed about 30 minutes later and waking up about an hour later than before. I am yet to undertake anything new, but at least I'm finding time to read books without feeling guilty.
So everything is good, except for my wife who seems to have more trouble adapting to my change of status than do I. She was used to me spending most of the time on weekdays in my home office, out of the way. Now I'm free to roam! She has just about stopped following me round the house tidying up after me (quite justifiably in some instances). I think it will take some time to find a new balance between time spent together and time spent separately, but I'm sure we will in due course.
There are frustrations, of course. My previous employer hasn't sent me a P60 or P11D yet, which is annoying. In addition, they have imposed some probably illegal contract changes on my former colleagues, which has made me quite angry. I'm still trying to sort out my finances going forward, which seems to be taking longer than I would like.
In summary then, life isn't completely stress-free, but it's a lot better than it was. I'm so glad I made the decision to retire early.