Speaker 1: When I retired, of course, I expected things to change.
Speaker 1: I expected more free time, I expected less stress. I
Speaker 1: expected that wonderful feeling of not having to set an
Speaker 1: alarm clock anymore, and I expected that to last forever.
Speaker 1: But what surprised me were the little things that kind
Speaker 1: of quietly disappeared. Not the big milestone so much, because
Speaker 1: we're more prepared for those, but the tiny things that
Speaker 1: I didn't even realize were important until they were gone.
Speaker 1: So if you're retired or you're getting close, I have
Speaker 1: a feeling at least one of these things is going
Speaker 1: to make you smile and say I thought I was
Speaker 1: the only one. I'm Morey Debransky. This is life starts
Speaker 1: at retirement. I produce a retirement lifestyle video every Saturday
Speaker 1: at noon ish. I'd love for you to subscribe and
Speaker 1: join our community. So one of the things that kind
Speaker 1: of quietly disappeared that I didn't expect to make a
Speaker 1: difference in my life was the alarm clock. Because for
Speaker 1: almost forty ish years, my alarm clock would go off
Speaker 1: before six every weekday morning, and I used to just
Speaker 1: hate that thing. I did not like having to get up,
Speaker 1: of course, but then retirement came in one morning, I
Speaker 1: just kind of woke up naturally, and of course it
Speaker 1: was before six at the beginning at least. And I
Speaker 1: looked at the clock, though, and I smile and I went, oh,
Speaker 1: this is wonderful. But over time I thought, now now what,
Speaker 1: like really now what, because I realized that that little
Speaker 1: alarm clock wasn't just waking me up, it was giving
Speaker 1: my day purpose before my feet even hit the floor.
Speaker 1: And nobody told me or I guess I just didn't
Speaker 1: realize that one of the hardest parts of retirement isn't
Speaker 1: really having too much time. It's deciding what deserves your time.
Speaker 1: So these days, I still don't set an alarm clock
Speaker 1: unless I absolutely have to, but I do try to
Speaker 1: add some struck mature into my mornings, whether it's filming
Speaker 1: a YouTube video, going for a walk, working on some
Speaker 1: of my speeches, or even just sitting on my phone.
Speaker 1: Often I like to have a diet coke in the
Speaker 1: morning instead of a coffee and just checking my phone.
Speaker 1: So I guess I've learned that the routines don't disappear,
Speaker 1: but now we just get to choose them ourselves. The
Speaker 1: second thing that quietly disappeared that I didn't realize i'd
Speaker 1: miss was just what I call the little sort of conversations.
Speaker 1: So from the office, I don't miss the office politics.
Speaker 1: I don't miss the endless meetings, the deadlines, the performance
Speaker 1: reviews yuck. But I do miss just those little conversations.
Speaker 1: You'd walk past someone's desk and you'd say, hey, did
Speaker 1: you watch the hockey game last night? Or how was
Speaker 1: your weekend. A lot of those conversations just lasted like
Speaker 1: thirty seconds or a minute, but it really maybe reminded
Speaker 1: me that we belonged somewhere. And after retirement, those little
Speaker 1: moments just quietly and nobody really checks in, Nobody drops
Speaker 1: by my desk because I don't have a desk, Nobody says, hey,
Speaker 1: do you have a minute. And it turns out, though
Speaker 1: that those little conversations filled a much bigger place maybe
Speaker 1: in my life than I ever realized. And that's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons I try at least every day to
Speaker 1: meet friends for coffee, to go golfing, to get out.
Speaker 1: Because I could sit behind this with this computer all
Speaker 1: day long and mixing. You know, the day's gone and
Speaker 1: I haven't even seen anyone. So connections don't really have
Speaker 1: to be big to matter. Sometimes just those thirty seconds
Speaker 1: is enough, and oftentimes I'll sit there and read your comments.
Speaker 1: They're one of my favorite things to do, So thank
Speaker 1: you for that. The third thing that I miss, and
Speaker 1: I know this is going to sound ego driven, and
Speaker 1: it's whatever, it's having a title because for years, when
Speaker 1: someone asks, hi, I'm more ingen what do you do, well,
Speaker 1: the answer was easy. I'm a mortgage broker, I was
Speaker 1: a sales trainer whatever that. I worked at Yellow Pages.
Speaker 1: It was simple, it was instant. You knew that. And
Speaker 1: I can clearly remember the first time somebody said hey,
Speaker 1: what do you do after I retired? And I was like,
Speaker 1: and instead of saying, hey, I'm retired, I said, oh,
Speaker 1: well I just left my job. I was at Yellow
Speaker 1: Pages and I was a sales manager. Well, they didn't
Speaker 1: ask what I used to do? What do I do?
Speaker 1: Why couldn't I say, I try I retired. It bothered
Speaker 1: me for years and years and years, but it took
Speaker 1: me a while to realize. I guess it really wasn't
Speaker 1: about losing my identity, although that it did bother me
Speaker 1: and sometimes still does bother me, but it was I
Speaker 1: guess I've learned since that, I've discovered I'm more than
Speaker 1: just that job title, and I think that's been one
Speaker 1: of the gifts that I really enjoy about retirement. Number four.
Speaker 1: One of the things I didn't realize that i'd missed
Speaker 1: that just quietly disappeared is deadlines. Can you imagine that
Speaker 1: I didn't think i'd missed that at all. But for
Speaker 1: most of our working lives, something was always do. There
Speaker 1: was a meeting, a report, a customer, a project, or
Speaker 1: even just you had to be at work at a
Speaker 1: certain time. You had to be there. And even if
Speaker 1: we complain about deadlines that I did, they gave our
Speaker 1: day momentum. And now nobody cares if I follow the
Speaker 1: laundry today or tomorrow. And the funny thing is, though
Speaker 1: I still give myself deadlines. So I still like structure
Speaker 1: in my life. Some people don't, but I need some structure.
Speaker 1: So I do what I say. That's going to be
Speaker 1: up every Saturday at noonish my videos. And I still
Speaker 1: like that structure. So if I tell you that I
Speaker 1: want to keep my word, and so I've learned, then
Speaker 1: I guess that purpose for me didn't necessarily disappear in retirement.
Speaker 1: I just had to create new purpose in my life
Speaker 1: so that I could have that. So I have deadlines
Speaker 1: and I didn't think i'd miss them. So the next one,
Speaker 1: number five, being needed, it just quietly disappeared, and then
Speaker 1: it reappeared in a different way. But this really surprised
Speaker 1: me because for years and years and years, somebody needed
Speaker 1: me every single day, customers, coworkers, etc. And then retirement
Speaker 1: came and all of a sudden, my phone doesn't ring
Speaker 1: very often, my emails slowed down. I'm still needed. I
Speaker 1: feel I'm still needed by my family. My grandchildren still
Speaker 1: need me, my husband still needs me, my mom, but
Speaker 1: even the grandkids are growing up. We have a twenty
Speaker 1: year old granddaughter who really doesn't need me, my fifteen
Speaker 1: year old. I made a video about her and how
Speaker 1: she came out to the trailer this summer and didn't
Speaker 1: need grandma, and it was really hard. I'll include that
Speaker 1: the Lincoln here. But I guess retirement taught me that
Speaker 1: being needed isn't something we should wait for. Sometimes we
Speaker 1: need to create that need if you want that. So
Speaker 1: maybe you're volunteering, helping a neighbor, you're babysitting out here
Speaker 1: at the trailer. We were just working on We're having
Speaker 1: a ladies golf tournament on Sunday, so being needed for
Speaker 1: me feels good. So sometimes you just need to reach
Speaker 1: out and be that person who reaches out first, and
Speaker 1: then that feeling doesn't have to disappear, but it does change.
Speaker 1: Number six Now I know this one most people can
Speaker 1: relate to, and I'm the money person in our family Payday.
Speaker 1: That counds kind of funny too, but I do miss
Speaker 1: pay day every single two weeks. I knew exactly what
Speaker 1: was coming into my bank account and we're not broke,
Speaker 1: but we're not like woohoo rich. But it was nice
Speaker 1: to have that commitment, nice to have that knowledge that
Speaker 1: you knew what's coming in. And retirement's different. Now we
Speaker 1: have investments, we have pensions, we have budgets, we have woods,
Speaker 1: are awls, and so it isn't necessarily worse, but it's different.
Speaker 1: And that just quietly disappeared. I knew I would miss,
Speaker 1: you know, the money, but I realize every two weeks
Speaker 1: for a long time, I went, oh, oh, what are
Speaker 1: we gonna do now? So if you felt that too,
Speaker 1: you're definitely not alone. And then number seven, Sunday nights
Speaker 1: I don't miss the Sunday night anxiety. I don't miss
Speaker 1: thinking about Monday morning meetings and getting up, but I
Speaker 1: do miss, which is weird. I do miss what Sunday's represented,
Speaker 1: like a fresh week, like yeah, something new, it was
Speaker 1: a new beginning, and without work, Monday can feel like
Speaker 1: a Thursday. And there's days where I'll get up but
Speaker 1: I don't even know what day it is, and that's
Speaker 1: both good and bad. I think the longer that I'm
Speaker 1: into retirement, the more it's easier, but the weeks can
Speaker 1: really start blending together. So now again, I try to
Speaker 1: give myself something every week to look forward to, a
Speaker 1: golf game, a video, coffee with a friend, a day trip,
Speaker 1: working on my next cruise talk, whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: I try to do something every day to give myself meaning.
Speaker 1: So now those are the seven things that sort of
Speaker 1: just quietly disappeared that I didn't realize I would miss.
Speaker 1: But as I was making this list, I realized something
Speaker 1: that every one of these quiet moments leaves behind maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit of an empty space. And retirement isn't
Speaker 1: really about filling your calendar so much, or for me,
Speaker 1: but it's about filling those spaces with things that matter.
Speaker 1: So some of the quietest moments now after time have
Speaker 1: become the happiest parts of retirement. Others take a little work,
Speaker 1: but I guess none of us have to figure this
Speaker 1: out alone. We're all in it together, and hopefully we
Speaker 1: all can figure it out. So I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from you what was the biggest thing for you that
Speaker 1: went quiet after you retired, Because maybe it's something different
Speaker 1: and I didn't even mention it for you, So tell
Speaker 1: me that in the comments. I do read them all
Speaker 1: every single time, and I think our story just might
Speaker 1: help someone else realize that they're not the only ones
Speaker 1: feeling that way. I'm Lauren Debrasky that this life starts
Speaker 1: at retirement. If you're new here, I'd love to have
Speaker 1: you in our community. Every week we talk honestly about retirement,
Speaker 1: the good, the challenging, the everything in between. Because I
Speaker 1: truly believe that retirement is the end of something, it's
Speaker 1: the beginning of something wonderful. My saying is, make your
Speaker 1: retirement remarkable. Thanks for joining me. I'll see you in
Speaker 1: the next video.