Retirement, change, and (yikes!) boredom

This morning, I noticed a shadow floating through the corner of my mind. It took me a minute to realize what it was. Finally, I recognized it: boredom. That’s a red flag for me, a warning of trouble ahead unless I pay attention. For me, it works like this.

Word on the street is that people don’t like change. Change is scary, it’s confusing. It interrupts our comfortable lives and demands that we adjust, adapt.

Change means that we have to give up whatever we’ve held on to and learn a new way of being in the world. This is true when it happens on a minor scale (How do you turn on this flippin’, new-fangled faucet?). It’s true when it happens on a world-shaking scale (How do we understand the place of the US in the world after 9/11?). And it’s true of all the medium-sized changes we face every day.

Retirement brings change on virtually every level: daily schedules, familiar routines, financial needs and resources, relationships and social needs, physical abilities and health, our place in the workings of society, our minds … all of these change. If you like things to stay stable, retirement is probably not comfortable territory.

But I actually thrive on change. If things don’t change, I get bored. And for me, it’s just one short step from boredom to depression—uncomfortable territory, for sure. So, for a changeaholic like me, the change built into retirement is perfect. In fact, that’s precisely the origin of this blog’s title “Retirement in the Mix,” meaning retirement that incorporates anything I can manage to mix in.

Still, the freedom of retirement also allows me slip into dangerous (if comfortable) habits. It can lure me into a “routine” that makes my days sort of tend to themselves. Therein lurks the boredom that I noticed flickering through a corner of my mind this morning.

Here’s the irony. My new regime—lower workload, more time to do other things—looks ideal as an opportunity to keep my retirement lively and full of change. My plan has been exactly to fill my new-found time with changes, with new adventures.

I’m not talking about exotic trips to distant lands. There’s plenty to keep life lively right here. I have a pile of unread magazines tall enough to be their own coffee table. I want to read those, and I want to devote enough time to reading that I actually keep up with them down the line. I also want to read novels and non-fiction books. I want to hang out at the local coffee shop. I want to take walks in different places instead the very convenient route out my door. I want to go to museums and hang out for hours. I want to go out to lunch with a friend. I want to enjoy my volunteer work without feeling the urgency of getting back to work. I want to do political and professional stuff for fun instead of feeling stressed by the time it takes. I want to go to movies and talks and performances in the middle of the day. I want to take a drive because I love driving. I want to think about where I’ll go on my drive.

Basically, I want retirement in the mix. So what’s stopping me? I could do all these things! In fact, I have made some changes already—taking time for the gym, for instance. But overall, I fear I'm getting stuck. Caught in a rut. Running the hamster wheel. Trapped by my own inertia. I’m discovering that it’s hard to break the habit of living at my desk. More to the point, it’s hard to imagine how to do that. And that  sense of "stuck" feels boring, risky.

Wait (I said to myself)! I’ve done this lots of times before. Each time we moved, I found myself recreating a life that fit my need for change and variety. We’ve been in Colorado for several years now. Why would I be surprised that it’s time to rearrange my life? As the kids would say, Duh! Hello!

So, it’s time for me to stir up some change, rattle my own cage, try out things that take me away from instead of back to what’s familiar. I need to stop letting my days manage themselves, stop just yielding to what comes automatically. I need to actually think about what I’d like to do. Daily. I need to make novelty a top priority. So, I have my task. For someone who craves change, this is just another round of the never-ending game.

Oops. Now that I’ve said it here, in public, I guess I’ll have to do it.

Yikes.

Yea!