A Day in the Life: Being Retired in Arkansas

I've been retired exactly one year today. What's it like so far?

Spoilers: I love it to pieces. Was it worth working fifty years* for this retiree life in the Boston Mountains? 

I'd have to say yes, mostly because most of those years I was a professor, which was a job I liked a lot. (There were some bad years, and I never quite made enough money, which was pretty stressful.) If I had been working a job I hated for all that time, maybe not.

What do I do with my time all day?

Well, I get up at dawn and take the dog to the dog park. He runs with other dogs and brings me balls to throw him. Then we come home and he goes out into the yard to make sure nothing has been stolen, and I make tea. While I'm drinking tea, I do several puzzles and my Duolingo. This caffeinates me enough that I can start working. Right now I'm working on book reviews for Asimov, so I am either reading for those or writing those.

Around noon, I eat something. Usually a bagel, sometimes a cheese sandwich. I also make lunch for Dr Skull, whose hands still don't function well enough to make his own lunch. (The pain doctor has recommended a neck surgery which might help. We're thinking about it.)

Then I take the dog to the dog park again. He needs to run around with other dogs at least twice a day. If you're considering a border collie, keep that in mind.

In the afternoon, I do things. Like, some days I go to the library. Some days I buy groceries. Once in awhile, we go to the bookstore or Walmart. There's also this cool store in town that sells Japanese imports, or I can cruise the thrift shop. If I don't do any of those, I might make bagels or flatbread or lie on the couch and read. Maybe I do laundry concurrently, or set the Roomba to vacuuming.  (I have to make bread a lot because there is no eatable bread in Arkansas. It is all as sweet and soft as cake.)

Around four, I start supper. If there are leftovers, I can keep reading instead. Or maybe we order in. We have enough money to buy dinner from restaurants! It's great.

After dinner, I do the dishes and then I take the dog for a walk -- either the dog park again, or just around the block. More reading at night, or occasionally television, though right now I seem to have lost interest in watching TV shows.

Sometimes the kid comes over and cooks dinner for us, or we take him and his husband out to eat somewhere. Every Friday we have lunch together at a local Greek place. 

One day this summer we will go to Crystal Bridges and maybe another day to the Botanical Garden. And the kid wants to learn to drive, so we'll have to pencil that in. And there are always medical and vet appointments. Also, I'm growing a tiny garden of herbs, watermelon, and a fig tree.

It's a great life. If I could have one wish, I'd like the dog to get used to sleeping past dawn. Please.

Anyway, retirement for me is 10/10, highly recommend. It really helps that we have money now, though. I wouldn't have been able to retire anywhere this soon without it. People who say money doesn't buy happiness have never been poor, if you want my opinion.

*I got my first 'real' job at 15, working in a snack bar; before that, I had lots of little jobs, mainly babysitting but also delivering papers, my first 'job,' at age nine. Between then and when I started working as a baby professor, I worked in delis and at McDonalds, in a library, and managing that same snack bar, summers, from age 18 to 23. Doing that made me enough money to pay for my undergraduate education, by the way, though I also lived at home most of the time I was in college.