Retirement is not a onetime thing; it is a long term process. In earlier years when I was preparing for retirement I deemed it pretty much that event where I left the workforce and collected my virtual gold watch. But after that ceremonial event is when the real thing takes place. I must admit I struggled with just what to do for the first year or so of my retirement. I finally decided that I really didn’t want to fully retire so I ended up opening a woodworking cabinet shop. That lasted, to one success or another, for about six years and then I moved on to other things.

Basically retirement, among other things, is a period of experimentation. I made certain decisions and then changed them to something else as the years have progressed. If something didn’t work, and many things I tried didn’t, then I moved on to other things. Don’t worry that you may make some wrong decisions. You almost certainly will make wrong decisions. To me that is part of the retirement process. It is great that at this point in my life what I do is up to me (with my hubby’s permission of course ).

In the ten years since I left the corporate world I have been into several different things. I am now gladly in the full retirement mode. That is I no longer take money for what I use my time for. One thing that has remained constant during these years is my volunteer work. I have spent a couple of days a week giving back some of the blessings the Lord has showered on me during my life.

My latest thing is building a slot car track. I am going to fill the room which used to be my cabinet business paint shop in the back of my barn with a slot car layout. I considered model railroading but that just seems to boring for me (ha). In the Spring I may just migrate on to remote controlled trucks. I am eyeing a place behind the barn to build a track for those.

And the journey goes on….