
This is an original, raw email written by Pat Ruppert to her friend, Mary. Pat was kind enough to let us share with the Project Bold Life audience. Enjoy!
Good morning, Mary!
I got your textâthank you! Itâs been a hectic week (month, year) and Iâm just finding time to sit down and send a note. Canât believe that itâs already been a month since I left work, and if it wasnât for my dwindling savings account, there wouldnât be any concrete evidence that life has changed. My house isnât any more organized, I havenât finished any more projects, I still go out to lunch several times a week.
At dinner last night, [my son] asked me what Iâve been doing all day since I retired. I had to think for a minute. But hopefully my answer convinced him that Iâm not just watching tv and eating Bonbonsâalthough there is some of that going on, too. Iâve stuck to my plan to spend the first part of the morning on the treadmill or following along with an exercise video. Getting ready for the day takes a while; what I could do in 30 minutes when I was working now takes an hour and a half. My focused shower, dressed, hair dried, blush and eyeshadow, bowl of cereal and out the door has been replaced by a dozen distractions.
And itâs the same with everything. When you work, you have to pay attention to time. But when youâre retired, time expands. A trip to Target for shampoo that would have taken 15 minutes now involves shampoo, an overview of all of the womenâs socks to see if there are any in âextended sizesâ (there arenât), a run through the bakery to look at todayâs cake selection, sometime in the kidâs clothing department to be sure that there arenât any âtoo cuteâ outfits that need to go home, and a search for the kind of pens that the insurance salesman had and I absolutely need. I might as well work there.
Iâm trying to stay connected to my friends from work, but itâs harder than I expected. They still go to work. There are only 5 weekdays to get together for lunch. Now that Iâm not getting money dumped into my checking account every two weeks, lunch seems much more expensive. Iâm meeting with the financial guy next week to start my retirement distributions, so that should relieve some of the anxiety over money.
Thereâs so much to tell you. The people who are out and about during the day are the old people. They are terrible drivers, they still write paper checks at the stores, they move sooooo slowly. The young people working in the store canât see that Iâm different from the other old people. I have an Apple Watch and I kind of know how to use it.
Anyway, I miss you and hope to see you soon. Have a great weekend!
Love, Pat