What do you guys do for work?
- Thread starter tvbbnumber41
- Start date
I remember when this thread started wayyyyy back in 2020. It's ironic it's come up again because I retire next month! Thursday 2nd April is my official retirement day.
I've been working since I left school and never been out of work in all that time (42 years!)
I can say with an overwhelming degree of certainty that I won't miss work one bit. Time to chill a bit now. Though that extra time I have on my hands won't mean I'll be filling the house full of fish tanks, no way.
In fact quite the opposite. In the spring of next year I'm coming out of the hobby for good. Everything is going!
I've been working since I left school and never been out of work in all that time (42 years!)
I can say with an overwhelming degree of certainty that I won't miss work one bit. Time to chill a bit now. Though that extra time I have on my hands won't mean I'll be filling the house full of fish tanks, no way.
In fact quite the opposite. In the spring of next year I'm coming out of the hobby for good. Everything is going!
Congrats on your retirement. Sorry to hear you’re getting out of the hobby. I just retired last month and I’ve been thinking about draining my tanks one last time. I think I’m going to keep them another couple years. I’m comfortable leaving them for long weekend trips. I’m struggling with that decision at the moment.
I took full retirement in 2022, after being what I thought of as "semi-retired" for the entire previous decade. I was an industrial electrician; I usually worked about half a year up to that point, working at high-paying remote northern jobsites through the summer and then relaxing at home through the winters. I typically stayed at work camps, which were self-contained little villages where we were fed and housed for typically 3 weeks, then rotated home for a week, then back up to the camp.
I read so much about people who work hard all their lives, to the exclusion of all else, dreaming of retirement. When it finally comes, they have no lives, no interests, nothing to do with their time and nobody to do it with. They're often dead within a year.
Silly me! I am enjoying retirement immensely! I foolishly thought that I would still take a short term gig, a couple months here or there, but I now have zero interest in that!
I'm consciously limiting my aquarium involvement. I refuse to allow a pleasant past-time become an unpleasant chore; slipped down that road a couple times in my life and didn't like it. Less can definitely be more.
esoxlucius
, I really thought that you'd re-examine your plan to exit the hobby as retirement approached. You have your long-time dream Perch tank up and running now; seems a shame to end that experiment so soon. But now I see that
Egon
is thinking along those lines as well. But, hey, you guys should absolutely do what makes you happy; that's what retirement is supposed to be.
I read so much about people who work hard all their lives, to the exclusion of all else, dreaming of retirement. When it finally comes, they have no lives, no interests, nothing to do with their time and nobody to do it with. They're often dead within a year.
Silly me! I am enjoying retirement immensely! I foolishly thought that I would still take a short term gig, a couple months here or there, but I now have zero interest in that!
I'm consciously limiting my aquarium involvement. I refuse to allow a pleasant past-time become an unpleasant chore; slipped down that road a couple times in my life and didn't like it. Less can definitely be more.
esoxlucius
, I really thought that you'd re-examine your plan to exit the hobby as retirement approached. You have your long-time dream Perch tank up and running now; seems a shame to end that experiment so soon. But now I see that
Egon
is thinking along those lines as well. But, hey, you guys should absolutely do what makes you happy; that's what retirement is supposed to be.
To be honest I find it astonishing that people who know they are coming up to retirement age don't actually put any thought into what they are going to do when work stops. It's a massive shock to your system and you need to put some preparatory work in beforehand.
They just stop work and are bored senseless, in which case they end up going back to work in some capacity, which is as sad as it gets. You don't work for nigh on five decades to go back to it because you're bored!
I don't need this hobby to fill my time, in any case it doesn't take any time up aside from a couple of hours every Saturday morning for my water change. This is my second stint in the hobby, it's lasted a decade. It's just a natural progression for me to come out of it now. In fact I'm looking forward to breaking down my 360 next year almost as much as retirement itself!
