Another amazing sunset

f

February 8, 2021 at 6:21 pm outside the front door
 of the worldwide headquarters of Pierini Fitness 

When announcing to the world - my small personal world – late last year that I was retiring, I got lots of responses, ranging from congratulatory greetings to unsolicited advice and comments.  A common denominator of comments I received was that I would eventually get bored and end up back working at least part-time.  Now that I’m in my sixth month of retirement, it’s as good a time as any to reflect and share if this boredom phenomenon has arisen in my being, either entirely or in part.

Nope!

Yup, as of this moment, I have no desire to jump back in the rat race as a part-time business owner, consultant, or an employee working for someone else.

When in the rat race, however, I’d regularly say that when I retire, my legacy career would be working as a bagger at Trader Joe’s, a store where we shop for groceries.  Over many years shopping there, I’d watched their various employees doing their jobs.  They all had smiles on their faces and looked like they thoroughly enjoyed their jobs.  I would always think that maybe I would want some of that.  I envisioned myself bagging groceries or restocking shelves while moving around the store with some bouncy energy in my swift movement from here to there. 

It seemed so free of the highly technical nature of the work I did in my career where I was constantly using my brain and knowledge to serve clients needing my skills.

Truth be told, I currently have no desire to do anything like this, and I don’t need the money.  I’m still in the honeymoon stage of being a middle-age man retired person. 

How long will it last? 

Who knows, but I’m having strong beliefs that it’ll last longer for me than it does for others who are retired.

I think what separates me from them is that I have a lazy gene with which I was born.

Even though I worked my tail off for over 40 years, behind that external hard-working self-employed businessperson character resided an inherently lazy man.  Now that I’m retired, this lazy man is front and center and my new external character; I see him every morning when looking in my bathroom mirror.

This lazy gene protects me from the boredom others experience of not having anything to do.  I’ll never suffer from performance addiction as a retired person.  There’s too much joy just being rather than doing. 

To count my blessings and smell the roses – or maybe cactus, while looking forward to another late afternoon to view the beauty, outside my home front door, of another amazing sunset.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum