retirement – Page 2 – where the journey takes me 2

As you might have realised by the sudden gap in transmission we are now back home in Yorkshire and I am back at work.

Back at work wondering why on earth I didn’t put my final day to leave work as June 30th when I handed in my notice – so now I am stuck with 31st July (I gave them two months notice) and to be honest this was a mistake. The break from work for our two-week holiday has meant it has been so hard to return to fulfil these remaining days of which I have now only 7 to go (not that I am counting), but it suddenly seems an eternity.

It is a bit scary leaving but now I just want to get it done.

Overwith.

Start my new life…whatever shape that will be.

Today is my first day off this week. We arrived back quite late last Sunday, unloaded the car, watered our devastated and thirsty garden with endless watering cans of water (as we didn’t know if a hose pipe ban was in place) then fell into bed.

So now my home looks like it has had an attack of some kind with the contents of all the bags from our holiday dispersed around the rooms waiting for some action. So my task for today will be to CLEAR IT ALL UP.

I have washing to sort, unpacking to finish, menus to plan and a shopping list to write. I actually feel a bit disoriented and exhausted. Maybe that is just age, maybe just me but somehow as they say my get up and go has got up and gone.

I have a new follower, Cathy from Still Waters – welcome Cathy. I noticed her most recent post was about insomnia. I can relate to this – I did not sleep well the last three nights and it was not the heat but the pressures of work, or should I say the pressures of leaving work. There is still much unrest in the office – speculation as to where the new directors are taking us, the new imposed restrictions, the never-ending meeting and setting targets to bring in more money. It is all about more money – never about client satisfaction and care or even the employees satisfaction and care. I can’t continue to work in that world. So I won’t be.

Well I don’t wish to moan anymore I just have to sit out my last seven days over the next three weeks – my replacement starts on Monday – and then I can turn my focus to my new life.

What am I going to do with my new life? It is a bit like having a blank page or the start of a new year. I need a plan.

But that will be another post another day – I have to get moving on the tidying and shopping.

Quick update – whilst out shopping this afternoon I picked up a few things in Sainsbury’s – the rope coil basket was £6 and will be useful to keep our laptop chargers and cables in, the gardening gloves are reduced to £2.25 and are great for gardening – I had a pair recently at the cottage so I have bought 2 more.

Lastly, I got a copy of Mollie Makes – I hope it is the right edition – No 94 as it should have the feature in of Gillian’s home from the blog ‘Tales from a happy house.’

Back soon x

It’s official – on Tuesday 31st July I will be leaving work – (notice I say leaving not retiring) for at this point I am not sure what my immediate future holds, and also notice I say immediate future as my working life at 64 is becoming increasingly shorter.

So at present I am saying goodbye to all my colleagues and everything I have known for the last 19 years… to venture into the unknown.

I am not able to draw on my state pension until May 2020 – so a while to go yet and it will be a challenge to see if we can survive on just the pension of DH. His first instalment has just been deposited in our bank account. I think we have paid out bigger bills!

I can’t even believe we have reached pensionable age – it has come round quicker than expected. What happened to all those years that used to stretch ahead of us and are now behind us? Do I sound a little scared – I could easily be if I sat and thought about it too much.

I have a number of alternative opportunities at this point, other than just to retire. I have been approached by one or two people to work within the Legal Aid sector that I know and love but remotely from home (I quite like the idea). But and this is a big but, I do want to have some quality time for myself to do all the things I am passionate about – gardening – crafting – painting, and some time just to be rather than to do and I want to do all these whilst I am generally still fit and able.

So lots of decisions to make and lots of challenges ahead of which I will no doubt keep you posted along the way. Any tips or advice welcome.

Apologies for anyone trying to leave a comment recently and thank you to the people who have hijacked other bloggers commenting page to get a message to me. It seems that WordPress Twenty Seventeen theme that I chose is not comment friendly so I have now switched themes – so I hope this solves the problem and I would love to hear from you if you would like to try again.

On the same note there are a number of blogs mainly on Blogger that I used to comment on that have recently changed and only allow Google account uses now for comments and I cannot sign into mine. I would love to leave you a comment if you could adjust your comment drop down to include the ‘Name/URL’ version.

So that is all the technical stuff taken care of and I am now about to run around in a frenzy trying to pack to go up to the cottage for a couple of weeks. The weather sounds good and I am sure our jungle of a garden up there will need quite a bit of attention. I am also hoping for a trip out on the Waverley paddle steamer – one of my favourite holiday treats.

Back soon x