Month: February 2018

Is My Early Retirement — Too Late?

    Here I have been worrying about retiring too early. I am 64 and my “full” retirement age is a year and a half away yet. I had been deciding to retire early for many reasons, including wanting to spend some quality years with my older husband with us both healthy.

     Now I find myself seriously sick these last two weeks with a “cold”. At least I have been hoping it is only a cold, since I have had no fever. But hearing reports about young people thinking they just have a cold and then dying, of pneumonia supposedly after being having the flu going around. John, my husband and I have been sick for 1, going on 2 weeks now. Then, last night I was considering going to the ER, Urgent center or seeing a doctor. I was having trouble breathing and standing upright with pain on my right lungs area.  I remember having similar pain when I was in my 20’s, pleurisy and walking pneumonia. Pleurisy for the stabbing pain with deep breathing and walking pneumonia since I was still up walking and had pneumonia.

     Well we have both gotten through last night and today. Have been taking zinc lozenges and loads of healthy foods/liquids: mostly taking green smoothies and vegetable-bean soups with lots of healing spices like turmeric, nutritional yeast and other such additives to up our nutrient levels. Health regained by healthy intake. Let food be thy medicine and let medicine be thy food as Hippocrates stated.

     We seem to be a bit better today. I sure hope we are both truly better. I will be extremely mad if I am retiring too late to enjoy any time with my husband. Even madder if I am not around for at least a couple of years to explore and do a few of the things on the old bucket list.

GETTING STARTED WITH RETIREMENT-SCHEDULING OR WHY DON’T I HAVE ANY TIME?

Hey, I must apologize for not posting in some time. I have no excuse and every excuse under the sun. I retired, just before Christmas. I have been looking forward to being retired. I was going to change my life; my time was my own. I had such plans. I was going to take care of my health, exercise, eat right, clean my house, take care of my husband AND have time to do those things that interest me.

One of those things I wanted to do was to work on this blog. I was going to write, share what I have learned with others. Turn my life around to one that is shiny and bright.

What happened? One of my problems was that I let my sister get in my head. Now, my sister is a wonderful, talented person. Still, she thinks I am crazy for starting this blog thing; a big waste of time that people sign up for and then it eats up your time and you can’t do it. Kind of like a New Years resolution, it falls by the way side. So, that has happened, life got in the way and I haven’t posted in some time. but even so, I have found that writing is good for me. Here I am, back writing and posting again.

What got in the way? A lot of things but, really regular life. Especially as we get older, life, death and illnesses eat up a lot more of our time. When I was talking with my sister, we were going to an unexpected family funeral in another state. That ate up a week.

Then work was calling, my boss told me that I should work, not retire. Asked me to fill in for another worker, tried to get me to pick up some hours here and there. “Just12 hours overnight”.  Just for this one client no one else knew how to care for her problem and equipment (I am a nurse). I did help 1 day and have continued to take care of one client. I enjoy working but I am ready to retire. Then they found another nurse who knows how to access an implanted port; so I retired fully, I thought. Then that nurse fell and broke some bones, and I am continuing to care for this one client, which is fine, for now. I am finding that I really want to retire. There goes another week, or two.

Then my brother couldn’t urinate and I ended up taking him to the Emergency Room. Then, I got sick, then my husband got sick (he thinks he still is and thinks we both had the flu, though no fever, chills, body aches). As the cold/flu finished I then developed a nasty cyst on by back: it became HUGE, red, swollen and painful. That brings me up to today.  I know I have to go see the doctor, but, first I have to take my brother in for surgery tomorrow.

Nurses are not good at taking care of ourselves. I am on Obamacare for right now.  Will start Medicare March 1st. I was hoping to hold out until then, since it will all be out of pocket for now. Thinking I must go before then, crap.

So, I feel like I have accomplished nothing. I did not get organized. I did not get my house all cleaned. I did not finish my cooking class. I did not lose weight (I know not a great combo). I did not exercise or even successfully fix my treadmill. I did not finish my nutrition course. I did not find my camera and take pictures. I did not blog. I felt like a failure and like my schedule was out of control and that I was hopelessly behind in everything.

I look at this and realize that I have been unrealistic and putting a lot of totally unnecessary pressure on myself. The reality is my schedule still belongs to me. I will get things done as I am able. Life will continue to get in the way. I will learn how to manage my time better with a regular schedule and share what I learn. One of my favorite songs I found when my father died, was by Bob Carlisle called “We Fall Down” and talks about how we all fall down, then we have to get back up. I am getting back up. I am blogging, and it feels good. Life spins on.