Never the R word, please

It is getting on for ten months since I finished paid work. 'Retired' in popular thinking, but not in mine. The word is misleading.  I tell people who ask that I have moved into 'post work liberation' - PWL. That could not be more fitting: the overwhelming experience is indeed one of liberation. I speak as someone who has been in paid employment since the age of 17, save for four years at university in my twenties. So it has been a long slog of just shy of fifty years.

This new dispensation, sometimes called one's Third Age - is turning out to be a delight. It astonishes me that I now have an income without having to earn it (though strictly speaking I did earn it and over the years contributed it to savings and pension plans of various kinds). One of the main sources of that delight is the gift of time. Another is that I am no longer responsible for people or processes. I'd long since been a manager or director in the organisations I worked for, and being a person who is temperamentally programmed to being responsible and reliable, it was often an exhausting business. Those responsibilities have now gone, and I don't miss them.

These first months have been new and thrilling. One element has been rest. No longer driven by deadlines, obligations and all the 'headspace' needed to keep a job on track. Books I bought years ago are now getting read. Streets and districts here in London are now getting explored and visited, along with galleries, museums, coffee shops and libraries.  Time with S is both more frequent and deeper. My prayer life feels more pervasive and real.

I have not 'retired', I have changed gear.  And once this phase has bedded in, I hope to discover new opportunities to be useful.