Busy. Busy. Busy. Do you ever get tired of being busy all of the time?
Sometimes, the best way to enjoy retirement, according to Roger May (Wall Street Journal: New York, N.Y. September 13, 2009) is to get away from it all.
You are retired for heaven’s sake, why in the world would you need a vacation? Every day should be a vacation. Retirement, by definition, means a break from your past and a break from full time work.
For most of us retirement isn’t the calm oasis that we thought it would be. If you have opted to travel you may have found that travel, and everything associated with it, is quite exhausting. At times taking a vacation seems more like work than work itself, and it is far from being tranquil. Even the pace of travel is exhausting, especially if you feel pressured to do and see as much as possible in order to get your moneys worth.
The author supposes that what is missing in life is the kind of do-nothing vacations that you took when you were working. It didn’t always turn out that way back then either, but the dream was always there. You probably feel that retirement should be one big vacation, with plenty of time to take it easy and do whatever you want, but that isn’t how it works these days. Everywhere you turn you hear people talking about how they don’t know how they ever had time to work because they are so busy now.
Time is now spent adding to a list of activities that just goes on and on. There are meetings to go to and functions to attend. There are sporting activities, there are trips to the gym and there are errands and doctors appointments, and classes, and hobbies, and a hundred other things that fill the days to overflowing. Most of us don’t have a clue as to where the time goes.
So, don’t let anyone give you a hard time when you tell them that you are planning a relaxing vacation. Plan away. September is always popular for seniors because other vacationers, especially those with children, have packed up for home. It doesn’t hurt that many places have off season rates as well. It is time for you to enjoy visiting with friends, go for long walks and read that stack of long neglected books. If you are scheduling yourself to the point of exhaustion, it may be time to take a real vacation in order to get away from it all.
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