Retiring!!!!! The good and the unexpected
 

I have been looking forward to this for 42 years. And I have made all of the preparations, planning, had the farewell celebrations and 12/31 is my last day. I am SO ready!!

I also have a good vision of what I will do with my time post-retirement. The one thing that caught me off-guard was the moment of saying goodbye to individual co-workers.

We have spent all day together for many years, and many people are taking vacation, so I am saying goodbye in bits and pieces. But it seems so surreal to say goodbye and really mean "Have a nice life", even though we can all stay in touch via email, facebook and Linkedin. NOT that I regret my decision in any way!

It's one more aspect of retirement I don't think we're prepared for. Work was such a big part of our lives in so many ways.

Well, I really meant that it caught me by surprise , but not that it is a bad thing. Change is good! And I have been following TOTV since 2011, and I can't remember ANYONE saying they wish they had worked longer.

I was sharing to help other people prepare and celebrate too!

Congratulations on your retirement! I retired in May after being in one place for 37 years....I experienced the same feelings you are having...my office was near the front door and everyone for several weeks would be coming in to wish me well and saying they would miss yelling good morning and good night to me.....but like you, I had an idea of what I wanted to do in retirement and kept focused on that. I keep in touch with co workers via social media and when I went back to NY in October, a bunch of us got together for lunch. What I also kept in the back of my mind, was that many of my coworkers were planning on retiring soon after me and were all heading in different directions. May you have a long, happy and healthy retirement!

One big surprise for me was after saying goodbye.... Crickets... Only a very few kept in touch. Yes I reached out, invited them etc but I found out who were my REAL friends. At first it was hard to swallow but, it really caught me off guard. Many have said the same to me..they were your work friends not to be confused with Real Friends. On to making new friends here! Congrats on your retirement

You do know that when anything goes wrong, for the next year or 2 they will blame you.:duck:

Thank you for your well wishes!

I liken it to graduating from high school or college.....moving on to a new phase of life, and adding new friends. Since the advent of Facebook I have reconnected with many home town and college friends, so that should be true for work friends too!

oh, yes!! For sure! At my last few meetings they started joking about that already.

Congratulations Quirky! I found retirement to be happy/sad but have never looked back. The sad part was not seeing good work friends daily but I do keep in touch with some of them. The happy part is multifaceted and HUGE. Again, congratulations!

Very best wishes, Quirky.

Congratulations!

I too am retiring on 12/31, after 45 years of working in EDP / MIS / IT. I have found the same thing about saying goodbye. It's in bits and pieces with the holidays and vacations. Some are rather emotional.

Around here, the joke is how many projects are being assigned to me for 2015. For once in my life, I won't be worrying about it!

See you around The Villages!

Congratulations on your retirement Quirky.

Thank you, and congratulations to my fellow retirees!

I also worked in IT, and saw so much change in technology over the years. (The following is said in an old lady voice)...."When I was young", they only had punch cards; no personal computers, email, word processing, or any of that.

I agree with you! I think my staff is tired of my stories of the "dark ages". :)

Congratulations Quirky! Retirement is pretty great once you get the hang of it.

Congratulations Quirky! Yes it is emotional saying goodbye to Co workers and I even cried when hugging some goodbye. It was just as hard leaving our home and I cried when the front door shut for the last time. So many emotions arose when saying goodbye to family and friends before moving to TV. I was not expecting retiring, and the big move to be that hard so I do understand.

I can tell you it won't take long for you to adjust to your new life. What your feeling now is temporary. You'll be so busy doing things you've dreamed of you won't have time to think of what you left behind.

I find Skype invaluable for keeping in touch with family and friends. Good luck to you in your new adventure in life.

Congratulations! I found that it took me 6 months to realize I was retired and not just on vacation. I think you will find that if you only had work in common with your work friends those relationships will slowly end. Enjoy yourself.

How was it pulling the emotional plug moving away from kids and grand kids?

I have always lived more than an 8 hour drive from family members, and we would visit as often as possible by flying. WHen I moved to Florida, my closest relatives were in upstate NY, PA and MD, and they were happy to visit me, especially in the winter.

I have used Skype, facebook, texting, and phone to keep in touch regularly. Also tools like Shutterfly for photo albums.

I know a lot of people are in a different situation, and moving would change their face to face frequency with family members.

I know what you mean about saying goodbye to co-workers. It is very hard. They had a big luncheon for me (55 people), gave a speech, asked me to say a few words and I was tongue-tied. Then my workers from my old office had another luncheon (45 people), I had to say goodbye to all of them. Then my boss wanted to take me to lunch. We said goodbye. Then he wanted to take my husband and I to dinner so we did that saying goodbye again. Then on the day we were packing our pod on our last day in Ohio my boss came to the house and watched us load up. It was so hard to say goodbye. I loved all of my co-workers but once all of that was done I was so ready to get on the road to come down here for our new life. It has been great. 6 years so far and we still know it was the best decision we've ever made.

On January 15th, you'll say'

"I'll never forget what's their name". :D

Congrats on your impending retirement. :smiley:

Congratulations! The only hard part for me is talking to past coworkers or clients that I have kept in contact with and containing my (retirement) excitement.

We live in one of the most incredible and exciting places for retirees.

Going into our fourth week of getting settled in our forever home.

Come have fun with us Quirky3!

My wife was afraid that I wasnt ready for retirement. I proved her wrong. I caught on very quickly and Im very good at it. TV will do that to You. Also work friends are just that. friends at work. Once work is gone , with few exceptions, so are they. I dont miss them.

I got to retire in 1998 when I was 52. I was an IT director and for two years they kept asking me if I was ready to come back. Never took them up on their offer. Just remember the job was you and you were not the job. You did the things you had to do then so now you can do the things you want to do.