Meaningful retirement thriving on a 3-month project
Should you start retirement with a travelling project?
Before retirement time, we wonder how we should initiate our new lifestyle. What are we going to do with our time? Should we get more involve in our community through volunteer work? Should we take a membership at the gym? Should we get more involve in a hobby ? Should we start playing our favourite sport everyday? Should you spend more time with family? Should we have friends at home from 5 to 7 regularly? Are we ready to downsize from a house to a condo or a motorhome? Or, shall we go camping on a trip across the country?
For some people retirement only means that you don’t have to go to work anymore. For others, retirement is the time to do valuable things that are highly significant. If work is occupying lots of your time and energy, the switch to retirement could be experienced as a solitary and non-stimulating period in your life. Doing nothing could become boring! Action is what we need!
It’s a good idea to look at alternatives but at one point you have to decide and act on it. Some people have more difficulty than others to take what they call a major decision. The challenging decision could be hard to make if the question is how am I gone to live my retirement for the rest of my life. Taking a decision becomes easier if you add a time frame to it. What will I do for the first month or the first three months of retirement is usually easier to answer than what am I going to do for the rest of my life.
Our retirement.
In my work experience, I had the opportunity to accompany different persons adapting to many life changes, like marriage breakups, deceased parent, job lost, including retirement. Some people experience happy retirement and others become bored and depressed. We all want to be in the happy group who enjoy retirement.
As many people do nowadays, I have retired more than once. My first official retirement was after thirty years as a university professor. The decision to retire is not always easy to take especially if it is from a meaningful job you enjoy with a network of colleagues and students who also became friends over the years. Retirement from the university was not for me retirement from the workforce. During my years as university professor, I had developed a consulting practice as a psychologist and mediator? My adaptation to retirement from the university was smooth. The major reason for the smooth transition was because I had a major retirement project. I officially open practice as a full-time psychologist and mediator in my hometown until my second retirement.
My second retirement was quite different. It was a total retirement from the workforce. It was prompted by my wife choosing her own retirement. She sold the Travel agency she has been developing for nearly thirty years. We both agreed it was time for both of us to retire from the work force. Now as a couple what are we going to do with retirement?
Being both passionate about travelling, we decided to initiate our retirement with a three month camping project. Living on the east coast, we decided we would slowly cross Canada and back? We were two couples hauling our travel trailers behind our sport utility vehicles.
Here are important decisions we made, as couples, to help us have a more enjoyable journey.
Time of morning departures
One of our first day of travelling we had a discussion on establishing our time of departure the next morning. In our discussion, we agreed that if we leave at 8:30, 9:00 or 9:30 we would most likely stop at 4:30, 5:00 or 5:30 in the afternoon at our next campground. So we agreed that in the mornings, we would get up, do our morning routine, exercise, shower, breakfast and then pick up things around our campsite : chairs, table,… During that routine we would signal to the other couple when we were just about ready to leave…. in 10 minutes or so. Our time of departure was never a problem! We left at different time based on circumstances and maintained an enjoyable pace throughout our trip. We did not feel scheduled as when we were working, we were enjoying each day of our retirement.
Seize the day(Carpe diem)
Having as a distant project to visit Vancouver Island, on the extreme west coast of Canada, we again discussed the organization of our journey across the country. The purpose of our trip is to enjoy or seize each day and not to have as our only target to get to our far distant location, Vancouver Island. How could we best enjoy our trip with minimal stress? We agreed to identify a multitude of destinations and scenic attractions which we wanted to stop and visit. The duration of our stay at a campsite depended on the number of attractions we were planing to visit. This way, we were in Ottawa, the capital city, on Canada Day, July 1st when the Queen was visiting. After, we visited all the provincial capitals on the way. The capital city is like a trophy of the various natural resources of it’s province.
This is how we enjoyed Winnipeg and Saint Boniface , Regina, The prairies as well as the rocky mountains. We enjoyed the West Edmonton Mall, the Calgary Tower, Banff, the Columbia Icefields…, Jasper, as well as Kamloops and Vancouver and finally Vancouver Island with Victoria and it’s spectacular Pacific Rim in Toffino, British Colombia.
Our return trip to find the east coast of Canada again was done using a more southern route crossing the northern USA. After southern Alberta, we enjoyed the northern states like Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Illinois and the Great Lakes before entering back into Canada.
What did we learn from this trip?
We learn to enjoy each day with all of its beauties and to cherish the relationships with fellow campers and with our travelling friends. Beginning retirement with a major trip assured us that we were comfortably enjoying this lifestyle.
After a few weeks back in our home, we decided it was time to downsize. During the next year, we sold our home, bought a Motorhome in which we have been living full-time in Canada, during the Summer months, and in the southern states in the Winter. The social media keeps us connected with friends and family everywhere.
This is how an initial camping trip prepared us for our retirement lifestyle. I do not suggest that you should all initiate retirement with a 3-month camping trip. However, I think everyone should start retirement with a meaningful project.
Happy retirement is for people who engage in major projects.
