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Quick serious comment that has not been addressed yet, but I feel the need to bring up to all of us.
On Tuesday I went to lunch with a local buddy of mine who retired about a year ago. I thought it a bit odd that he would just call me out of the blue and ask to have lunch, but I thought maybe he was trying to get started again on our regular lunch meets we used to have.
I could tell by looking at him something was wrong....he didn't have his normal jovial persona and his face looked worn.
Long story short...he is struggling mentally with his self worth and his place now that he is retired. He feels like he is no longer contributing positively like he did when he was working....for some reason a job and a paycheck was his emotional identity and after a year of doing, as he put it, "selfish things only for me", he had gotten down on himself.
I listened....just talked when he needed me to. Man did stuff come out that I could tell he needed to vent. Then I took him to meet the Counselor from our church and introduce them to each other. Our guy handed him his card and said...."when you need to talk, call me." Nothing more...just his way of saying come talk to me when you need to. (Our church has many people my age who are in retirement or getting there and developed an outreach program just for that group)
To sum up...if you have friends you see that are struggling like mine was, make sure to keep in touch with them. We will all eventually have times that we struggle in retirement and it's no shame to admit it.
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