Recently Retired? You Need A Friend.
By Erica and Karen
One of the most difficult parts of suddenly being retired is suddenly being alone. You have spent years working with teams, clients, customers, colleagues. Your days are filled with people. People who make you joyous—or not. But people.
When you are not at work, you have family and friends around you.
You are seldom alone.
Except now you are. Your former colleagues are too busy to hang out with you—or even meet you for lunch. So are many of your friends. And they actually don’t really want to see you. They don’t know what to make of you now that you are retired. Your family is also worried. Are they going to be responsible for keeping you occupied? They did not sign up for that.
Somehow the end of your job became the end of community. All of your structures are gone. No new ones are obvious. So you really are alone. It’s not that much fun. You are at sixes and sevens, you don’t know what is next, you want to talk to someone.
You need a friend who can commiserate and help you come up with a plan.
Luckily, we went through the process at about the same time. Right after we retired, we played—museums, matinees, boat rides. We talked about how weird it was that we could do whatever we wanted to do, whenever we wanted to do it. No place to be. No phone calls to return. No meetings to attend. It was a lot of fun. But then it was disconcerting. After that, it became sort of embarrassing.
We hadn’t really thought much about retirement before it happened. We learned a lot about the first stages. Who knew our status would disappear overnight? And our image become unrecognizable? Who knew it would take so much time to move on from careers and jobs we loved? And even more time to figure out what to do next?
We came to realize how important it was to be able to talk about our fears and frustrations, as well as our plans for overcoming these strange reactions.
Almost without our noticing, the future subliminally began to take shape. We began to understand we had to work at this, just like any of the other difficult problems we had faced in our careers. We learned more about retirement reactions by meeting with people who had recently retired. We discovered more about what they wanted to do next by talking about that, too. We got an office, where we could work on the solution for ourselves. We learned about what a blog was, and decided to start one of our own.
Once we had an idea about what we were going to do, people were happy to talk to us and to introduce us to other people. Our ideas began to crystallize and a new community began to form.
It would have been hard to do this alone. (We are thankful we did not retire in the teeth of a pandemic.) That’s one reason we decided to work with Revel, a platform that allows women to find other women with similar interests, in their city or somewhere else, so they can connect. Revel would have been a game changer if we had not known each other.
But we did, and we started Lustre. Of course, something else would have come along—maybe we would have become real estate agents or designers, or book store owners. Maybe we will anyway. But it was great that were able to push each other forward.
If you are just starting the post-career journey, we hope our story will help push you forward, too.
That’s just where I am. I retired in February, in the middle of the Big Texas Storm. Broken water pipe, kitchen and living room mold remediation, chaos. So far there hasn’t been much fun but maybe it will come. I do have 2 long-time friends who are in similar career/age space. Anyway, Lustre showed up at just the right time for me. Thank you!
Hey, same here! I retired in Austin in March, right after the TX freeze and was already dealing with a condo fire claim at the time … looking for friends now 🙂
Hi, I retired in March 2023 and live in Austin. I am also looking for friends…
Your story definitely resonated for me. I retired in June 2020 just as the pandemic was continuing. In the months coming up to retirement, I thought the pandemic and lockdowns would end by June! When it didn’t, and I had to change the plans I had for my first year of retirement, I had to pivot to find activities that I could do by myself and for myself. Reaching out on-line and by phone and writing notes to mail was how I tried to nurture and refresh friendships with people I hope to see in person soon. Thank you for providing a voice to how I was and am feeling.
I have been experiencing the trifecta! Pandemic, retiring AND moving to a different state this year. I would not recommend this to anyone! But, challenges have always been my strength, so I am trying to make it work. No doubt, it has been very lonely. I am so grateful for Lustre and the validity that I receive from the articles and comments. Thank you!
Wet blanket here.
The older a woman, the more difficult it is to find (and keep) friends. Friendship is not "fluid." By a certain age, women have their social circle and too many are reluctant to admit outsiders. One can even find that a book club’s membership is ‘closed.’
Retired July 2020 after a planned 18 month transition from my position in a great organization. Found I spent more time working on that transition versus my personal plan. So now using s bit more structure after reading “ Afterwork”.
Connecting and making new friends post a career that involved travel outside local community is a true challenge. I’m optimistic as more boomers retire. Looking forward to a new season or “are-wirement” I enjoy this website!
Retired 2 years ago and we moved out of state. Fast forward to my takeaways: Needed to get engaged soI am consulting part time. It’s fluid and it works for me. Finally found a mostly my age "professional" group of women, which is morphing into more social than professional activities (yay!)(btw, I tried several groups before I found this one) I took my first "solo" international trip in 2018 with a group of women I did not know. It was fabulous and I will do it again and again. I did not expect to have to work so hard at finding engagement of any kind. Cannot believe how often I was "not seen".
Love Lustre. It is me.
The Revel link does not work.