Life Stages of Retirement: Bliss, Cravings, and Self-Discovery

Some morning, I definitely felt like this during my "bliss" period.

As I enter a life of retirement, I’ve found myself going through three stages of retirement in adjusting to my new life.  There was an initial stage of complete and utter bliss (that often lead to looking like the photo above). Then, a stage of craving for purpose emerged and a final period of self-discovery and awareness.

Should you ever decide to retire abroad, keep in mind that there are at least two types of adjustments that you will have to make. Obviously, one has to adjust to life in a new country and culture. With proper planning, this isn’t as difficult as you might imagine. What I am finding the most challenging is dealing with retirement in and of itself. And its easy to confuse the two if you aren’t conscious of the changes that you’re going through from retirement alone.

With proper planning, the challenge of living abroad in a foreign country and adapting to a new life in a different culture has not been so difficult. Planning included development of a living budget, study of the country, reviewing the problems and successes of other expatriates already in country, and actual site visits in person. These steps have made the move to living abroad relatively painless – although there have been many life adaptations that I’ve had to make.

What has been more challenging has been figuring out how I’m going to spend my life in retirement. So far it seems that adapting to retirement has involved at least three stages.

Stage 1: Initial Life Adjustments for Retirement – Bliss

The initial stage to making a life adjustment for retirement was complete and utter euphoria. Life was complete bliss:

• I no longer had to wake up and drive 26 miles to work every day.
• I no longer had to sit in dreary administrative meetings listening to the ramblings of my boss who would ask for opinions and then spend the next hour arguing with everyone why his opinions were the right ones.
• I no longer had to listen to the whining of my employees and pretend that I really cared that their feelings were hurt by the actions of another employee.
• I no longer had to burn the midnight oil to meet tight deadlines and manage huge budgets and figure out ways to generate more revenue because the state’s politicians were too incompetent to manage the state’s budget.
• I no longer had to eat fast food lunches between meetings.
• I no longer had to deal with high blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar from eating poorly and a stressful life as a manager.
• I could wake up when I felt like it and do what I felt like doing, and when I felt like doing it without anyone’s approval.

This period of life, immediately after retirement was pure bliss. For all intents and purposes it felt as though the world was taken off my shoulders. It was pure relief from the day to day pressures of my career. I never truly realized how much of a burden my career was, despite the fact that it was rewarding, profitable, and I really thought I enjoyed it.

Stage 2: Filling the Vacuum – Cravings

Oddly enough, the “bliss” stage was nothing more than a honeymoon period after retirement. After about a month of cruising, I began to feel a need for something – a sense of purpose, a need to be productive in some way, and a need for intellectual stimulus.

When I moved abroad to the Philippines, I started my life abroad with one month of constant play. I promised myself a month of vacation that would rock my world and relieve myself of all my inhibitions (being an administrator in higher education places a LOT of inhibitions on your lifestyle).

In my first month, I became well acquainted with San Miguel Light, a fairly popular beer in these parts. I became a popular customer of a number of karaoke bars and learned the words to popular hit songs in the Philippines like “Nobody” (which is actually a Korean song) and taught some of the locals a number of oldies but goodies. An old Beatles song always got a few chuckles from my friends – “When I’m 64”. In case you don’t know it … it goes something like this: “When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now … will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64?”

But after a month of bleary eyed mornings with a mouth that tasted like Patton’s Army had just marched through it, I began to feel an emptiness inside. It wasn’t for a lack of friendship or for want of doing things. There were many friends to be found and things to do. It slowly dawned on me that although I was enjoying myself, there was something missing in life.

I actually missed some of the pressure of my career and the sense of purpose that it gave me. Sure, learning karaoke songs and having another San Mig provided some amount of purpose for a little while, but it was hardly the kind of purpose that I was used to or craved. I needed something more.

Argh … I discovered that although I was pleasantly retired, some sort of twisted Calvinistic work ethic still ran through my veins. I needed to be socially productive again.

Stage 3: Self Discovery – Finding Purpose and Meaning in Retirement

Rebirth of My Hobbies:  when I was young, I really enjoyed writing and photography. However, after a few rejection slips from various publishers, I realized that the life of a writer or photographer was a long and hard road. Sure, there are a few who make it big, but like the field of entertainment – for every rock star there are thousands of wannabe’s.

So I accidentally entered the field of education and ultimately, that became my career. I worked hard and it has in turn, treated me well in my retirement. Now, I can take up writing and photography once again in my retirement. Except there is no pressure to earn a living now. I can blog to my heart’s content, write, take photos and if I don’t earn a single penny … it really doesn’t matter. I have a steady pension now.

The rebirth of my old “hobbies” have provided me with a great deal of satisfaction and enjoyment. Blogging allows me so much freedom and hopefully, it will be of use to others who follow my footsteps and retire abroad.

Building Rather Than Consuming Wealth: building my life around personal interests has only been one aspect of retirement life. I’ve maintained an interest in being entrepreneurial. When I was working in education, I’d have to generate revenue for the college each year and I was pretty successful at it. The school benefited from 7 figure revenue streams that I generated, but my personal checkbook remained pretty lean.

Now in my retirement, I’ve begun to develop plans to make my retirement a time of building wealth – rather than a period of consuming wealth that most retirees get into. The details are secret (hehe … to avoid competitors) but I’ve put together a 10 year plan that should generate a very tidy sum for me during that period. We’ll see, but it’s a nice challenge to undertake.

How is it possible on a pension? When I retired abroad to a country with a lower cost of living, it gave me a lot more discretionary income than when I was back home on a full salary. That discretionary income can now be put to productive use.

Social Change and Giving Back: still, life is not about self-gratification and accumulating wealth. Those are pasttimes. In the end, there is a need for me to be socially productive, to return to the human race all the benefits that it has given me.

I haven’t quite worked this one out yet and am still working on it. I learned that I can’t save the world many years ago, but with resolution and purpose it is possible to change one corner of it for the better. I’m looking for that corner now and think I’m getting close to it. And perhaps, that will be my real legacy that I will leave behind.

Managing retirement can be the toughest piece to manage if you retire abroad. There is no one right or wrong way to do it. But I suspect that those expatriates who are the most successful in living abroad are those who have found some clear purpose for themselves.

(photo by Melodi2)

Popularity: 9% [?]