by Gail Davis

Created on: April 23, 2008

Impending Retirement: One Person's Emotional Journey From Excitement to Reality to Anxiety to Fulfillment!

Congratulations on your impending retirement! Did you ever think this moment would actually arrive? If you're like me, you look back on the last thirty years and wonder how they rushed by at warp speed. I spent the last six years of my teaching career counting down the months and then couldn't believe that the big day had come!

I have friends who are already retired and who made it look very appealing. They had plenty of time for grandchildren, reading, exercise classes, golf, and travel. They finally completed all those house projects they had been putting off for years, and they looked so rested and relaxed. Who wouldn't want a piece of that?

As usual, there was much fanfare surrounding the big day! After working in the same school for 25 years, my roots were deep. I loved my colleagues and looked forward to seeing them and laughing with them every day. I adored the teenagers and knew that they kept me young in many ways. I enjoyed the intellectual stimulation and the challenges. But I was sure ready not to wake up at 5am ever again!

Anxiety set in fairly quickly after that big day. I didn't have children or grandchildren; I didn't play golf; I didn't have a lot of extra money to travel extensively; I wasn't one to "putter" around the house, and I couldn't sit and read all day, every day. Thank goodness I had my retired friends to exercise with or go to lunch with, but I sure missed the daily laughter I shared with my colleagues. Because I started teaching at age 21, I was still fairly young. What would I do with myself for the next 20-30 years?

For me, a new passion emerged that I never knew existed. It didn't happen right away, but after about seven months I started exploring different things I could do to fulfill that need to "teach." I finally decided to try to create a website about a subject I was quite familiar with, and that was all things weight-related. I had extensive knowledge about this "niche" but absolutely no knowledge about creating websites. After completing some on-line research, I signed up with a company that provides on-line tutorials, and I was off and running! Sure, it was difficult and frustrating and challenging, but the rewards were instant! In the process, I discovered another passion that I had previously ignored, and that was a love for writing. If someone had told me in June that in seven short months I'd be a Webmaster and a writer of on-line articles, I would have laughed! I had never given one moment's thought to either of these things in all my years of teaching. Now, with the discovery and addition of these two things, there just aren't enough hours in my day to do everything that I want to do. How lucky can I get?

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