First World Retirement Problems

Silly title, huh? It just struck me that retirement itself is a first world phenomenon. It's a gift. However, life without the daily 9 to 5 grind does present some challenges.  I'm not complaining and I'm not referring to those things that present as problems for all of us whether we're working or not. This is not about how to get the house "Thanksgiving clean" or how best to organize the food pantry so your crackers don't fall out while your looking for the tuna fish. There's just something different about not working in the conventional way that's hard to explain, but may be worth exploring.

Society defines us and judges us by our work. One of the first questions we ask when we meet someone new is "What do you do?" Or course, by that we simply mean "Where do you work?". But, hey, if you think about that question more broadly, it's really a tough one to answer. I mean, what do any of us do? What are the actions that make up our lives? Should you have to answer that? Could you? How would you?

In the first months of my retirement I've been trying to do just that. I find myself outlining my accomplishments in the silliest of ways. I list my completed tasks at the end of the day and make sure Mo knows I rearranged the bathroom closet and washed the bedroom curtains.  Ta da! I dusted. I bought a new vacuum cleaner. I descaled the Keurig. (Actually, I haven't done that yet, but you get my point).

Have I told you I'm organizing my photos? I'm building a website on Weebly. I made my first YouTube video. I bought a domain name. Okay, okay. Enough already. I need to stop. My first first world retirement problem is  understanding that I don't have to explain myself. It's 9:00 a.m. Friday morning. I just wrote a blog post. What else am I going to do today? Mums the word.