Time

I have often heard that people should retire to something, rather than from something. The idea seems to be that you will be bored, or at least unfulfilled, without a job. This wasn't terribly worrying to me, as I come from a family of "doers." On vacation we visit museums and take hikes, on visits we repair each other's houses or help them shop for sofas. No one sits around and lounges at the beach in my family. 

I noticed that when I told people I was retiring so that I could move to Spain, this gave them a satisfying narrative. I wasn't retiring to just sit around, I was going to live in a new country! (No one ever seemed to consider that if I was inclined to veg and watch TV all day on the couch, I could do that just as easily in Spain is in the US.) And I do actually intend to go to Spain. But I'm not in a rush, and I have ended up retiring from something. My job was stressful for me. I was good at it, most of the time, but it required me to be on, constantly strategizing, and always interacting with people. I am utterly relieved to be done. I already feel much healthier: I'm sleeping more, I'm exercising more, and I am rarely part of personal interactions that I have challenging. My friends tell me I appear happier. (And I really am! I can't shut up about it!) 

Now I can slow down. It doesn't matter if there are eight people ahead of my in the grocery line, I have time to wait. I can sit on the couch and read a book or surf the internet every day for an hour or two and still have plenty of time to get things done. The most wonderful part of retirement has been opening up time. My friend N sometimes texts me on as he's leaving the house, and I join him for a bike ride to his office. He's commuting, and I get some exercise and friend time. I can wake up and decide whether I want to weed the garden or clean the house or work on a sewing project or go to a concert. 

I feel so lucky to have time.

Holidays

Last week I was able to celebrate not one, but *two* religious holidays, which is a lot more than this atheist usually manages. My friends J, M, and J came for a visit, only a month after my visit to NYC, and we had a Passover Seder. I have not taken part in one in several years, and it was super interesting and full of delicious food. I did not realize that there are so many different versions of the Haggadah (the text that you read telling the order and story of Passover), and the one we used focused on workers' right and collective action, which was novel. 

J, M, and J are all experts at fitting into a single selfie.

I also sang in an Easter Catholic Mass for the first time. My friends N and E invited me to be part of their very small choir (as in, with me included there were seven singers) that sings just at Easter and Christmas. I had to practice a lot in the preceding month to learn the music as well as the others, but it was delightful to be singing difficult, Latin-text music again. Medieval music has such unusual harmonies. I have attended a few Catholic masses in the past, but this is the first time I really needed to know exactly what was going on and when to sing all the various parts of the service. 

Practicing with N and E the day before. They both had to crouch down to fit in the picture with me. 

Now it's back to boring old holiday-free life, which is actually pretty awesome too.

NYC

The trip to New York was marvelous. I was primarily there to see my best friend and her family, so we did the traditional touristy things like.... taking a carload of stuff to the thrift store, and staying at home to bake a birthday cake. Okay, those are not so uniquely NYC, but when visiting such a massive city you don't ever forget where you are - even in downtown DC I never have to navigate so many people on the sidewalk. It really makes me thing carefully about what life will be like in Madrid, and how a suburb might be a better fit for me, so that I can be exposed to slightly more greenery and slightly less pavement.

My friend J is an art teacher, and their current unit is graffiti. I love that the students are learning about art form they see daily. J took us on a graffiti tour, teaching us about some of the different types and some of the informal rules. For example, it's not okay within the street art community to graffiti cemeteries.

   Nu Yolk! Yes, I smiled the first time I saw this, even though it's on the level of a Dad joke.

I played tourist on my final day, when the rest of them were back at work and school. I finally had a chance to visit the Cloisters, a branch of the New York Metropolitan Art Museum. It is an excellent collection of medieval art, in a building purpose-built for this kind of art. It was marvelous, but I wouldn't take just anyone there. You need to really, really like medieval art to want to spend the whole afternoon looking at it. 

When I had an hours to kill, I used Google Maps to see what was nearby and found the Little Red Lighthouse. This is not one of those clever perspective photographs - the George Washington Bridge is just that massive. There was a children's book about it, followed by a campaign to save the lighthouse in the 1940's, and now it just sits tucked under the bridge. 

New rhythms

So far I'd rate retirement as two thumbs up, four star, would highly recommend. I've fallen into a schedule of 2-3 days of socializing, 1 day of paid work, and 3-4 days of solitary pursuits. This seems about right for my introverted soul.

I am super ahead on the garden- everything is weeded and mulched, although it's too cold to plant a lot right now. I've been walking or biking most days, and the high gas prices are providing additional motivation to avoid using the car. My other goal is to start practicing Spanish more regularly, but I've decided to hold off starting until the paid work is done. I'm loving not sitting in front of a computer every day, and I want to continue to keep it that way.

I'm also planning travel, hopefully at a rate of one smallish trip month. In March, the plan is to go to New York City to visit my very dear friend M and her family. We have scheduled this trip five times, repeatedly delaying due to family emergencies, my dental problems, and Covid. I'm optimistic that it will actually happen this time since I am writing this blog post on a bus halfway to NYC...

I am pleased I didn't plan to sell the house and move as soon asi retired. Using these months to find a new rhythm is showing me that my life can be less packed. Doing things, whether it's buying groceries or biking to see friends, is way more enjoyable when I take my time.

Winter adventures

I have a zillion things I want to do in retirement while I'm still in the US. First up are travel and exercise, while also learning a "it doesn't have to all get done today" attitude - something that doesn't come easily to me. So I have scheduled all my travel through the end of May, which includes a fair amount of travelers visiting me. I began by going to Ohio to visit my parents. 

An ice storm hit while I was there. Hiking and walking in northern Ohio reminds me how much I appreciate the DC area - not only does spring arrive a month earlier, we have a lot more sunny days. Still, it is very pretty in the rural area where my parents live and it was surprisingly fun to tromp on the grass when every blade was encased in its own coat of ice. 

I'm also trying to bike or walk most days, something that I managed to start even before I retired. But now it's so much easier because I can go out in the warm, light part of the afternoon. Mostly I bike on my own, but occasionally I cajole friends to join me. I know there are lots of riding groups, but I ride especially slowly - 6mph/ 10kph, which rules out a lot of the super serious cyclists. My friends N and R are regular bicycle commuters who deign to go my speed occasionally. Our last trip featured some vicious wind but at least it wasn't Ohio weather.

And a photo especially for my friends and relatives who have escaped the Midwest - the ice storm coated my car. We ran a garden hose over it for a half an hour before it thawed enough to open the driver's side door. The ice didn't completely fall off for another 200 miles. Brrr.

 

Celebrations

I knew I wanted to celebrate my new milestone, but I couldn't figure out a way to throw a big party right now in a way that felt safe. So I had a couple of smaller celebrations with the friends that helped get me to retirement.

C and L are my FIRE friends- we met a few years ago in a financial independence book club and just hit it off. We have traded financial advice, reviewed each other's investment philosophies, and eaten a lot of ALDI (along with Lidl, the budget grocery store of choice) food together. C is already retired, and L is working as fast as she can to join us. 

We had tea at the Willard, a historic hotel near the White House. The food was tasty, but a part of me knew I could have made better. However, the real treat was dressing up and looking vintage glam while a harpist played and people brought us scones and sparkling wine. 

Familys T and M helped with a second celebration. The kids had macaroni and cheese and all-they-could-eat ice cream sundaes, and were grateful that they didn't have to eat the grown-up food, which included weird ingredients like roasted eggplant and truffled cheese. My friends E and K offered their house, which was ideal - their family did all the cleaning, and I did all the cooking. 

I used all the fancy food people have gifted me: imported pasta flour from my uncle and aunt, Belgian cooking chocolate my nephew gave me, and artisinal olive oil from my boss and her wife. For once, I was pleased with each and every dish I made. I discovered eggplant caponata, a Sicilian dish that is a excellent use for my many bags of frozen garden eggplant and improved my butternut squash soup recipe (secret ingredients: green apples, and garnishes of roasted pumpkin seeds and crème fraiche).

Now I wish I could retire a second time, just so I have all the parties again. 

Ten Year Plans

Tonight I am on the eve of my retirement, and I've been reflecting that this was a plan ten years in the making. I first heard about the concept of early retirement in 2012, on a blog written by a "Mr. Money Mustache." Before long I was trying to convince my late husband, Andrew, that this was something we should do. He was intrigued by the idea of financial independence, but I could only get him on board by promising that he'd never have to retire (like many physicists, he viewed doing physics as the fun part of life that you should never stop). 

A decade passed. I reduced spending, saved more. My location, lifestyle, and family changed dramatically, but the plan worked. It worked even faster than expected actually, since my income grew, my spending didn't, and I found a cheaper country to live in.

I might even consider this my second ten-year-plan, because when I was twenty-five, I decided that working a not-quite-minimum-wage job as a cook in Albuquerque, New Mexico, wasn't everything it was cracked up to be. I wanted to be a physics professor, and all that stood between me and that dream was... another bachelor's degree, getting into graduate school, passing my qualifying exams, and seven years of research.  A mere ten years later, I was a PhD physicist.

I hope that I can have a few more ten-year plans in my life. I don't know what those plans will be yet, but free time will help me find them. And here's pictorial proof of my new free time.

 Above is my weekly calendar while working. The green is fun stuff, and the blue is meetings. I had a *lot* of meetings every week.

This is my new life. I'm doing a tiny bit of consulting, which explains the blue, and then the blank space can be filled in with new, fun, green stuff.