I guess I'm lucky in that I had a bunch of other things going on in my life. Work never defined me - it was something I did so I could afford to do other stuff.
I remember meeting my last team lead a couple of years ago. He brought me down for lunch and explained who he was and what his plans were for the team writ large and what he intended to do to help each member of the team advance in their careers.
I stopped him after a bit and said, "John, my only goal at (Company) is to get to retirement in a couple of years. I have no aspirations at being a manager - my last job in the Army had me leading 84 soldiers in 53 separate offices and answering to six different officers at one time or another. I want interesting work, regular hours, and to be left alone to do my job. I don't want a promotion, am not seeking a promotion, and would probably turn down said promotion. So, does that help?"
He looked at me, smiled, and said, "So, how do you feel about football?" It was a very pleasant lunch after that. *grin*
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Originally Posted by Mosbonian
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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