7 things I’ve learned about how to live happily in retirement
Long before I had any thoughts of retirement, I enjoyed a busy career as a journalist.
On a rare night off, I was invited to a writer friend’s house; she was a superb hostess with a cranky, charismatic hubby who retired from the industry. He had a career as a producer whose claim to fame included the hockey fan favorite, “Slap Shot,” starring Paul Newman.
That night, I tried to get his take on a film I had just seen.
“The movies?! Anne, I don’t have TIME to go to the movies!” It wasn’t an angry response, he just seemed puzzled that I didn’t understand. I chalked it up to his long list of eccentric interests: he loved screwcap wines, knives, guns and cigars; he had inherited Alfred Hitchcock’s collection of stogies.
No time for a flick? What was he up to? Now I know.
Decades after that dinner, I’m almost two years retired myself. I had enjoyed my fast-paced job as a features writer/editor for local publications including The Orange County Register, Los Angeles Times and Orange Coast magazine. But as I began to age, it was taking a bigger and bigger chunk out of me.
I hung in as long as I could, trying to keep up the relentless pace. Then I started having health issues: I was trying to do my long run after skipping it for weeks and I threw my back out. I struggled on for a few years without taking a month for it to heal as I had in the past. Now that pain was chronic and I was in my 60s. Retirement loomed.
Still, the thought frightened me. What would I do with myself when I was off deadline once and for all? It’s been an interesting journey, but with time for self reflection I’ve learned seven important lessons on what makes for a happy retirement.
Finances first
Setting our finances straight was Lesson No. 1: Less can be more if it leads to delight.
The biggest money issue was real estate. I love Southern California and had vowed I would never move back to Texas. But how could I afford to retire here?
My husband also is a writer, and even before the pandemic we considered downsizing. We continually feared that the mortgage on our big comfy house eight blocks from the Huntington Beach Pier would crush us if I lost my job.
We wanted to Marie Kondo our lives, play it safe. The pandemic hit and we called our realtor to ask if we should wait. She didn’t mince words: “If you can get out quickly, I can stage it and sell it fast.”
We had an estate sale. Listed and sold within about six weeks.
We’d gotten our price but the problem in this luxury market is that we would have to spend it all to buy another place. Unless — and it was a big unless — we could live in an affordable 55+ community.
We decided to try it on for size. We found a charming rental in Laguna Woods that reminded us of our beach house. The tree-filled neighborhood with green lawns was elysian. There will never be another community built just like it because land is worth too much now in Southern California.
Joining the village people
We liked Laguna Woods so much we decided to buy. It turned out to be a huge relief. So much pressure was off our shoulders.
So, there we were in our new neighborhood, or should I say village? Modest condos. Wrinkled residents with tiny dogs. Some of my newspaper pals were collapsing with laughter. “Anne, why are you living in old lady land?”
Even my sister asked a couple of times. How do you feel living among all these oldsters? I answered with a question: Who wouldn’t want to be in a community where all around you were seniors enjoying their longevity? It was an inspiration that my neighbors were living independently, aging with grace, strength and dignity.
Honestly, some of them had a lot more mobility than I did. The longer I lived there the more I understood. There were five pools. I had more time to go swimming and luxuriate in a huge hot tub. Hospitals and doctors were all around us. I could see my nearby physical therapist weekly, so there was less pain and more nights of restful sleep.
I started to get more health conscious and dumped calorie counting for the Dash Diet. Pounds were shaving off, verrrrry slowly. Feeling physically better was the ultimate mood booster, and that was Lesson No. 2: Keep your spirits up and your body will follow.
I watch what I eat, but my diet isn’t draconian. When I interviewed celebrity chef Ina Garten, she told me a healthy diet is not the only key to longevity.
In one of her books, she wrote that she and her husband know a physician, a geriatrics specialist, who spoke to them about life expectancy. “Loneliness is an epidemic in this country, and may be a more important predictor of longevity than diet and exercise,” she wrote.
Creative fulfillment
It took about a year for the back to begin feeling better. During that time, I was doing a lot of thinking about returning to all the pursuits I loved, especially writing and music. Throughout my career I had thought about penning a book, played around with a few nonfiction ideas and also took courses in fiction writing, but nothing had ever taken off.
As I got closer to leaving my job, I started reading more. I bought a copy of “The Middle Passage” by James Hollis and the biggest takeaway was that my happiness was up to me; that was Lesson No. 3.
Hollis explains that we break from counting on our parents to make us happy and look to our soulmate to provide that joy; but that isn’t the path toward true contentment.
“It is a cruel self-deception to believe in the magical other,” Hollis writes. “When one has the courage to turn within, one has the opportunity to open to those neglected parts of one’s own personality. If one lifts off of the partner the imperative for incarnating life’s meaning, then one is called to the activation of one’s own potential.”
Would I have the courage to return to my favorite forms of fulfillment and face them like an adult? We had bought a dazzling new grand piano with some of the money we made from the sale of our house. But realistically, I gave up my dream of becoming a concert pianist many years ago, and now, with my back problems, I couldn’t practice six hours a day like I did in undergrad.
Still, I started playing again and my technique returned almost fully. Playing solos gave me an incredible sense of power as I was reminded how hard I had worked for years to produce a rich, bravura sound and how much I loved music. Who needs Spotify when you can channel Bach, Bartók, Mozart and Chopin with your own two hands?
Facing myself as a writer was a lot harder. Six months went by without missing writing at all. When I started to think about tapping out a book idea or a story, I would look at my desk and feel rage directed at my chair. That’s what caused all my pain: long hours of sitting. For a year, I was stuck. I had horrific anxiety, convinced that anything I wrote would be awful and that any time spent sitting would trigger intense back pain. There were tears. Nightmares. Psychic agony.
But one afternoon I remembered a dream I had shortly after my father died. He was a true Renaissance man: a math teacher, realtor, mechanic, a ball turret gunner who fought in World War II. As a teen, he was a laborer and one of the strongest men I’d ever known. In the dream, I saw his powerful hands — he boxed and had won a Golden Gloves award — and his palms were turned up, like the logo in the Allstate insurance ad. His voice simply said, “Begin it.”
Encouraged by the spirit of my dad, I decided to take baby steps.
Project chocolate
I thought of Anne Lamott, the patron saint of procrastinators, author of “Bird by Bird.” She always advises that if you feel stuck, start moving. “Don’t look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance,” she writes.
I riffed off her wisdom with Lesson No. 4: If you want to stop procrastinating, start putting yourself out there.
At first that lesson was pretty tough. I found myself avoiding some of my younger friends who weren’t retired because next to them I suddenly felt irrelevant. But as I made even a minuscule amount of progress, my courage grew. I started to plan more social activities and I took that lesson headfirst into my book project.
My big idea? A directory of chocolatiers in California. Would I have the nerve to meet with one of the field’s leading authors in the industry? While I was dragging my feet, I got a phone call from a former colleague who told me our friend’s daughter, in her early 20s, had died in her sleep.
The tragedy shot through our circle of girlfriends like a lightning bolt. We gathered around her and did everything we could to help her pull together a memorial. Meanwhile, the drumbeat of another life lesson has resonated in the background ever since: death can come to any of us at any hour.
Lesson No. 5: Don’t waste time second guessing yourself or thinking you’re too old to do something. Do what you want now or forever have regrets. I stopped saying I wasn’t ready to meet with the chocolate guru.
I was going to be in Vancouver, Canada, where she lived, so I reached out with an email to arrange a meeting. She responded! We spoke for hours in person and she set me on a fascinating path. She told me not to put anyone in the book unless their product was the best.
Since chocolate isn’t rated like wine or coffee, we agreed; I’d have to do all the tasting myself. Poor me! She recommended books on flavor. I’m studying vigorously and I’m certain loads of family and friends will volunteer to help with my “research.”
Bucket list anxiety
As for my old line of work, I don’t have the strength or interest to go back into the daily grind. I am freelancing, just to keep my hand in and to make sure the writing skills stay sharp. I’ve also begun my best hobby novel ever. It might never be published, but at this point, success to me is never fearing the blank page.
Yet, with all these Wonder Woman-sized missions of self-fulfillment on the go, there’s still more to do. For the first time I’ve got a little family around me. My niece and her sister have moved to Orange County. They fell in love with this place as kids, during summer vacations at my beach house. I like spending time with them and my great nephew, usually at my house because I love to cook and entertain.
My friends keep asking me if I’m traveling. “Do it before you’re 70!” they say. Up until now I didn’t think that I would be well enough, but I’m getting more fit and I’m hopeful. What better way to work on those European languages I studied but never mastered in grad school?
There are so many bucket list challenges it threatens to create its own anxiety, but for now I’m keeping that on the back burner: Lesson No. 6: You’ve stopped working, so be done with stress.
Other little lessons still creep up. Like the words of a former therapist who always said, “Give yourself permission to suck at something!” It’s a witty way of describing Lesson No. 7: Try new activities to see if they spark joy. Like a ukulele class I took at a resort while vacationing in Carlsbad.
So, each day is its own little adventure. Or not, because I can always sleep late and spend all day at the beach. There’s no schedule and no guilt when you’re off the clock. But if I stick to my retirement life lessons, I find it a lot easier to know what to do with myself each day.
I’m happy leaving work behind and finding the world so full of wonderful things. My neighbors keep reminding me that I could join one of the 200 clubs offered in Laguna Woods. Clubs?! Whuuuut? I don’t have TIME for that right now.