Pete was retired and seeing the US. Then Tracey came along.

Based on a post by ron de, in 2 parts. Listen to the ► Podcast at Connected.

 

 

The ‘workaholic’ retires.

It's amazing how much time you have once you retire. You have nowhere to be at any certain time and no people you just have to be there to meet. You have no deadlines and no tasks that absolutely have to be done before the corporate visit on Tuesday. It's like a curtain between you and your life has been lifted and you can see yourself doing what you always wanted to do.

That's what I thought I was going to see when I cleaned out my desk and went to the retirement party at my office. It was exciting to know that no longer would my life be dictated by some corporate edict or some problem that had to be solved right now if the entire business wasn't going to immediately collapse.

It was just that way for about a month. I could stay up late or go to bed early depending upon how I felt. I could watch movies on cable any time I wanted instead of falling asleep in the middle when watching at night. I could do anything I wanted to do; except after a month I didn't know what that was because I'd already done everything I could think of doing. There was a reason for that, and the reason started bothering me because of George Mills.

I was one of those guys who worked twelve hours a day at my office and then worked another couple hours at home. George was one of those guys too. George lasted six months after he retired before keeling over in his neighbor's back yard and croaking. It was at his funeral I realized George had never said anything about any hobbies or anything except work. He even had a complete set of work files in his home office that he kept updated to the current information so he could work at home. His wife said George had a heart attack, but I figured George had just given up because without his job, he had no reason to keep living.

I didn't want to go down that same road, but it looked like that was where I was headed. After a month, it was hard to get out of bed, shower and shave, and then get dressed. Other than a weekly trip to the grocery store for some frozen dinners and some beer, I just sat in my house. It was still winter, and when spring finally made the grass grow, I'd have to mow about once a week, but that was all I had to look forward to.

When I got home from George's funeral, I sat down and took stock of where I was in life. My list was both encouraging and a little dissappointing.

Youthful Infatuation Goes Bad.

The worst mistake I'd made was marrying Marsha when I was twenty and still in college. It was a time we were both studying hard during the week and playing hard on the weekends. When we graduated, me with a degree in engineering and Marsha with a degree in finance, it was still good for the first couple of years. After that, the marriage went downhill pretty fast.

It wasn't a money problem because we were both making good salaries. The problem was me. I know that. I couldn't stop working, even on the weekends, but Marsha wanted to go out and have fun on those weekends. She finally started going out by herself and in the process, met a guy who didn't work all day, every day, and then come home and work at night too. After the second year, we had a serious talk and decided to split and go our separate ways. Marsha didn't want anything from me, so other than spending about two months salary on a lawyer in case she changed her mind, it didn't cost me anything except my time and a lot of soul searching.

That soul searching led me to realize I probably wasn't going to change relative to my work habits, so another woman probably was going to work out the same way. I dated a little at first, but it never worked out because there was always some important project I had to finish. After I canceled a date or two, she'd tell me she had already made other plans. I finally stopped trying.

The Bachelor Life.

All that work did get me a rapid rise in my company, then a higher paying job at another, and then another until by the age of sixty, I wasn't a millionaire, but I had enough in the bank I didn't have to work to live comfortably. I'd bought and paid for a pretty nice house, drove a new car every couple of years, and in general was pretty happy with my life.

I retired that year thinking I was young enough I'd still have time to catch up with everything I'd missed. What I ended up being was lost with nowhere to go and nothing to do. I needed some way to occupy my time or I was going to end up like George.

One afternoon, I was sitting on my couch and watching a travel show about national parks when I thought maybe I had an answer to my problem.

After a lot of thought, I'd figured out that work had given me three things I needed to be happy - something to plan for, something to do to follow that plan, and a way to keep learning. I'd looked at a bunch of hobbies other people enjoy, but none of them really interested me. They either required a lot of equipment and space or took a long time to learn. Watching about national parks was a different story. All I needed to go to a national park was me and I didn't need to learn anything first. I'd learn just by going there.

How to travel was the next question. Though my job had required flying a lot, I never liked it. I always felt like I was trapped in an aluminum tube and couldn't do anything to help myself is something happened. Driving wasn't that way. If I wanted to stop to look at something, I could stop. If I was hungry, I could get something to eat. If I was tired, no matter what time of day, I could just pull into a hotel and get a room.

Hitting the Road.

After a little figuring of costs, it looked like traveling around to parks might be fun, but it would be pretty expensive what with the cost of hotel rooms and eating out all the time. There was also the problem of my house. I couldn't just leave it empty for a month at a time, and a month is about what it would take to get to and back from some of the parks I found that interested me. I was driving back from grocery shopping one afternoon when the answer pulled up beside me.

The motorhome looked huge, but the driver wasn't having any trouble negotiating the traffic. It just took longer to change lanes and a lot longer to accelerate. All I knew about motorhomes was that you could live in them, so I started doing some investigating on the internet. What I found convinced me this was the answer to most of my problems.

I looked at several types, and decided the type they call "Class A" was what I wanted. I didn't need to be able to sleep six people, but they were big enough they wouldn't feel like living in a closet and they were really nice inside. They all had heaters for winter and air conditioning for summer, and even though most campsites had receptacles for electricity, the big motorhomes had on-board generators for power. I could park it anywhere and still have all the comforts of home.