The 1 sad thing Boomers have taught me to avoid in retirement
My Facebook feed is completely riddled with Boomers wasting their retirement online.
Mixed in with all the algorithm junk that now gums up the works, I’ll see a collection of responses from retired folks to memes like “I bet you can’t name one flower with the letter L”.
“lily” they’ll proudly post back, as though the post weren’t a naked attempt at trying to drum up fake engagement with a dumb question or glean personal information from people with lousy privacy settings.
Or they’re posting lengthy diatribes about how offended they are about some “sexy” performance at an awards show or something else they just wasted 3 hours watching.
Or hurling abuse at a corporate social media account that’s probably being run by a 22-year-old intern.
Or spending literally 5 hours a day looking at an iPad, getting mad at the news, and sending outraged email forwards.
Some people do this kind of stuff all day.
These folks are not infirm — they could be out doing all the things they probably envisioned doing in retirement when they were younger (getting outdoors, learning to play music or create art, traveling, etc.) — yet they are hopelessly addicted to junk media.
I understand it’s their lives and they can spend their time however they want, but I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t make me a bit sad.
Time is always running out
The reason I’m more cognizant of the slippage of time is that I wasted so much of it on my own addiction.
It’s also why I hope this piece isn’t misconstrued as me being judgmental.
I pissed away 10+ productive years of my life on alcohol.
I threw away countless nights numbed out on the couch and countless days feeling like garbage because of my crappy, alcohol-damaged sleep.
Instead of using my days on truly fulfilling creative pursuits or on making my dream of being an entrepreneur come true, I spend them tired, in a crappy mood, and fixated not on how I could improve things, but when and how I could start drinking that day.
Although I’ve turned things around in some mind-blowing ways in just 9 months since quitting, there’s still a sadness hanging over me at times.
As I wrote in this piece called I quit alcohol 6 months ago but 1 thing is making me really sad:
“When you don’t build your life around alcohol anymore, your perception of time shifts.
“Before, when I was drinking every night, the days kind of just blended together.
“Every single one was the same, unremarkable. I didn’t give a damn, either.
“Since I’ve started over, every aspect of my life acknowledges time.
“Every day that I wake up and do my Morning Pages, I write the date at the top. Every day I sit in front of my computer, I add the date to new spreadsheets tracking by business and investment income.
“At the start of the week, I put the date at the top of the page and do this weird bubble outline checklist thingy with all my personal and work tasks for the week.
“I’m finding that every time I make a fresh one, I look at the week before and think, ‘damn, another seven days already?’
“The other day, I re-watched watched a YouTube video by a creator I like that I’d seen around the time it came out.
“It popped onto my screen again recently and below was the publication date: ‘2 years ago’.
“Sheesh. Two years?
“What will I feel like when I look back at my own channel, see the younger version of myself, and find ‘2 years ago’ underneath?
“If only I had known time would move like this, I wouldn’t have wasted more than a decade’s worth of it drinking it away.”
Quitting alcohol last summer really did put into perspective how quickly time is now passing as I approach my mid-40s.
It has also made me appreciate the time I do have now and makes me angry over all the time I wasted.
It’s why I just want to shake people not just in their 40s like me, but approaching their 70s, and spending all day in front of their iPads and be like: “Can’t you see there’s more to life than this?!”
My retirement heroes
I am not at that age yet, but I know there is more to life and retirement because I see it on this site all the time.
One great thing about being part of this community is reading perspectives from people at all different stages of life.
Let me tell you about my two “retirement heroes” here.
I want to be like them when I grow up.
The first is Diana Leotta. Diana is one of the first writers I came across on this site as someone who was reading and writing a lot about sobriety.
Diana actually quit alcohol in retirement because she realized there was more to life than wasted nights and tired days.
Now, she has developed a love of pickleball and writing, and I’m thankful for the latter. I love Diana’s calm, kind style of writing, and I try never to miss a post. Her lifestyle in retirement inspires me and she offers a lot of life lessons and wisdom.
My second retirement hero is R C Hammond. R C recently retired and took the plunge of moving from the United States to Spain. What an adventure!
His creative retirement pursuit also turned out to be writing, and as he notes in this piece:
“Writing, for me, is a blessing beyond what I could imagine. An opportunity to delve into a part of me that was there but never asked to participate before. I’m delightfully enjoying every day. And the best part is you. I so treasure the relationships and friendships built along the way.”
There are so many ways to stay active and find creative fulfillment and be a part of a real community in retirement, as my writing heroes demonstrate.
So if I could offer some unsolicited advice to retirees tethered to their devices as someone who recently escaped an addiction of my own: don’t waste any more time.
Get inspired by the writers I’ve pointed out above.
Think about:
- What kind of physical activity you’d enjoy
- What creative pursuit would bring you fulfillment
And then just log off.
You’ll never find true happiness hidden in a Minions meme.
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