How do you want to retire?

RETIRE … YOU NEVER DO

Regarding how we consider retirement, and as a person who has now been “retired“ from full-time work for nearly 12 years, I don’t believe you ever do – that is, quit!

When you relinquish a particular area, something else will always take place. That’s just as well because if you retire And sit around doing nothing, you quickly go into a vegetative state and can become an empty and Unthinking vessel.

My aim in “retirement” is to give back. When I was developing as an educator, I had many people who supported and assisted me; they were “People, people“. I owe them a lot for helping me and for my developmental years teaching me so much.

In retirement, my giving back is taking many forms, including writing, publishing a blog, offering the blog content free of charge to people who would like to access it, writing on LinkedIn, occasionally publishing the newspapers and other media mouth plates and so on.

I am also giving back my time in retirement organising, albeit slowly, for a significant amount of material to be transferred to the Northern Territory Archives, where it might assist people researching or learning in the future.

I take a deep and abiding interest in politics and then what’s happening, and there are occasional forums and suggested comments where appropriate. It is often and always read that history is disregarded for the roof so much that we can learn from past happenings rather than reinventing the wheel and making the same mistakes. Education is famous for these repeated mistakes because nobody wants to learn from the past.

If, in retirement, I can do anything to change that idiom of thinking, then that will be a real plus: however, I am not holding my breath.

Finally, in retirement, I have time to garden, spend time with my family, support my grandchildren in their academic years at school, respond to people who seek my advice by phone or email and so on.

In so many ways, the notion of retirement is just a myth. Instead, it’s coming from the end of one road and starting adjourning up the next. I guess that goes on until the final sunset on life.