60+ year old thread.

I’m busier now than before I retired.
I’m happy I don’t have some incompetent fool telling me (trying) how to do my job.
I have a boat, a garage, and when the wife retires I may end up there more often…

 

I retired 8 years ago and my wife 7 years ago. We both would rather watch paint dry than go back to work. We have a zillion things we do that we thoroughly enjoy and many hobbies. We travel, we garden, she’s an artist and paints, I hunt and fish, we love to read, we are involved in numerous social activities, we enjoy going out on our boat and the list goes on and on. My only regret is that we didn’t retire sooner. We had the $$$ but I waited for Medicare eligibility which I didn’t need to do. Everyone is different but we enjoy every minute of retirement to the fullest.

 

After retiring in 2012, I often wonder how I ever found the time to go to work!
I miss a few people but never the job.

 

I do recommend retirement after a lifetime of work you need to have some time to decompress and enjoy yourself. I worked almost nonstop since 1974 as a mechanic but each person is different some are terrified to step off after a lifetime of working. Some will work their entire lives because they have made poor choices or had a life changing event, how sad. If you are lucky enough to have saved a little and can transition into freedom then by all means try it. Wife and I are both retired and can go anywhere anytime and that is a great feeling. The only thing I had a problem with was the social aspect of work. I had many many friends and colleagues after 32 years. I miss some of the people I came to know.

 

I retired at 52 and like Foster Imposter have always wondered how I ever had the time to work. In fact I've found that I might have done better financially by quitting earlier.

But the health insurance angle was troubling and it's a good thing we had Obama care.

It helps to have a wife that is a good friend, and as interested in things as you are.

 

Terrified? Poor choices? Life changing experience? Sad? I just wanted to go back to work. To each their own, the freedom of which you speak, for me, is the freedom to continue to work as I want, when I want, at the hours that I want.

 

I've been working since 1967 (paper route) and figure I'll need to work until the end of this decade to have enough stashed away to retire comfortably retire, yeesh, 63 years of work (counting my time with Uncle Sam's Misguided Children)!

Talk about "life changing experiences", after my wife's small business failed in 2011 and my (now former) business partner's side venture ran up a huge amount of debt in my name and then failed in 2012, we didn't have the proverbial pot to piss in; we tried to get our arms around the mountain of debt by selling our house, driving old cars, and generally living as frugally as possible; didn't work, we were forced into a Chapter 13 back in 2015.

The good news here is I enjoy the work I do so much I probably wouldn't retire even if I could.

 

Got dose #1 today . 2-6 months to get the last one

 

Yup ,got dose number one today 2-6 months for #2

 

Good deal.

 

That is awful, I am glad you enjoy what you do. What is it they say, if you enjoy what you do, your job is not work? 13's are not a walk in the park, it takes some guts to go through all that and still be pleased with life.
[If you are a ferrier, that is a real work, not like what I do.]

 

My work history encompasses a number of historic technological advancements, many now obsolete themselves. I am a living breathing museum of newspaper headlines, social upheavals, Unionized, Union busting, and non-Union workplaces, large corporations in blatant violation of environmental and worker health laws, small companies with over the top healthy workplaces, both non-existent and great retirement and medical plans, the topping out and collapse of American manufacturing industries. I'm proud of my place in history, and wouldn't trade any of it for a cushy job behind a desk in a smelly cubicle, no matter the extra zeros on W2s compared to my paychecks of old. From pet store Janitor to Newsboy to hamburger flipper to Armed Services to burglar alarm installer to manufacturing to corporate management and back to manufacturing again, and finally to a small shop in which I enjoyed making my own jigs for my own products for individual sales. I've made products that have gone to war, are in earth orbit, are in kitchens and laundries everywhere, and yes, in museums both as display cases and the displayed within. I've been fired for drunk on the job, forced out for being a whistleblower, lost jobs to company failures and plant closures. I have one major haunting bad memory, that of the explosion of the Challenger with all aboard, upon which I performed hand work to the very object of failure, the O-ring groove. Thankfully for my peace of mind, Design and Command Decision took the hit for the failure, but that was way too close to home. My final retirement was due to an on the job accident at age 71, when I took a fall some eleven years ago. I continue, and will never retire from being a Landlord, but that's another story altogether.

 

Bravo to all whistleblowers. That usually comes at more cost than people are willing to pay.

 

My sister had Shingles. She suffered with that for years. I had German Measles myself as a kid, so I'm prone to have Shingles also. I completed my immunizations of all kinds of shit, including my last shot today for Hepatitis B, whatever the fuck that is. Of course, as a Vet, I had a zillion shots while in service, so I guess I'm good to go.

 

Wow! We got our own little Orange blob, and it brought us 0.88" of a nice 20 minute downpour!


Cooled things off quite a bit too!

 

Alan, it’s chicken pox that causes shingles not measles. If you never had chickenpox you can’t get shingles. If a person doesn’t know if they’ve had chickenpox there’s a simple blood test called varicella titer test. If the test is negative then a person has not had chickenpox and can’t get shingles.

 

When I found out about the money/debt my former business partner had run up in my name it was the final straw; the house went on the block, and ultimately sold for a huge loss, and we rented a small "caretaker apartment" on a 70-acre horse farm in central New Hampshire; the apartment was less per month than apartments I had back in the early 1980s as the rent was partially offset by me taking care of their horses 3-days per week. Up at 4:30; get the horses fed and out to the various pastures, muck out the stalls and clean the rest of the barn, make sure the stocks of grain and hay were staged; shower, and head off for work. After my work day I'd come back home, prep the evening grain and supplements, fetch the horses back in from the pastures, and sing them a lullaby before shutting off the lights for the night.

I did the caretaker gig for over 8-years, during which time my manager at my actual place of work "voluntold" me I was taking over a new initiative in a field now known as Conversational AI; trust me, being in one's early-60s, learning a new trade utterly and completely foreign from anything I'd done in the past was an 18-month long struggle of, "can I learn this or should I retire now?" (something I could ill afford to do). The good news is I was partnering with a young kid fresh out of college in Bangalore India and the synergy the two of us developed was nothing short of amazing; we'd compare notes of things we'd learned, and in my case he'd often say something which triggered a memory of something which I'd forgotten back in 1982 which suddenly became relevant. In the end we managed to build a new style of architecture for conversational systems which is still very leading edge, and then last year I got head-hunted and hired, sight unseen (literally), to work for a consulting firm doing projects for clients all over the world. So no, I'm not a farrier, and no longer do any manual labor around the farm (we had to move in December due to the new job), I'm just a COVID-era Work From Home geek who, once travel restrictions ease up, will start hitting the road one to two weeks per month to be on site for our clients.

 

Yes Sir, while stationed remote in Turkey '89-'90, our Sq Ops Officer had it. I was 24-25yo and he was in his 30s...the way he suffered left a permanent mark on my brain. Known a few folks since, no one has a good report about it. I got the shot(s) as soon as I learned about them and VA said I could.

I feel the same about shots regarding my Vet status...I've been stuck by so much, I doubt I'm gonna die from a vaccine or whatever. If I do, oh well, is what it is.

Hope you are well Alan, take care my friend.

 

Funny thing about chickenpox, when my daughter was going into school, the school district passed a new rule stating all students either had to show proof of having had chickenpox or had the (then) new vaccine; she got the vaccine. Three years later she and literally the entire vaccinated population of her class got chickenpox; apparently the vaccine caused the virus to morph a bit and lucky me, I got chickenpox for the second time at the age of 50.

 

I seem to have one main thing in common with most in this thread...I've been gainfully employed since I was 12 years old ... 45 years and counting. I reckon that means something.