These days, most mornings retirement feels easy. I wake up early, make my coffee, and the day is mine before anyone else gets a vote.
Some mornings it still feels strange. No meeting. No deadline. No place I have to be because somebody is paying me to show up.
And then there are ordinary moments like the other day.
I was sitting at the kitchen island with Sheryl, coffee in hand, and the grandkids had turned the room into a small weather system.
Noise. Motion. Questions.
Someone needed help with something that mattered enormously in the moment and would be forgotten ten minutes later.
That is when it hit me.
That sounds personal, and it is.
But I suspect a lot of us are standing inside a richer season than we realize.
Not because the hard parts disappeared.
Because we have finally been given enough room to notice what is still here.
For most of my adult life, I lived somewhere ahead of myself.
Projects. Vacations. Financial goals. Always the sense that life would feel settled after one more move.
That was how I knew how to take care of the people I loved.
It built a wonderful life, and I am grateful for it.
But it also trained my mind to treat the present like a waiting room.
Retirement did not make that habit disappear.
At first, I just gave it new clothes.
Fitness became something to track.
Travel became something to plan.
The men’s group became something to build.
Writing became something to improve.
I notice it most with my grandkids.
There are moments when I am with them, but part of me is already managing the next thing.
What time are we leaving?
Where are we eating?
What needs to happen next?
Then one of them says something funny, or grabs my hand, or wants me to look at something they have already shown me three times.
And I have a choice.
I can keep managing the day.
Or I can be in it.
That choice sounds small.
Lately I have been making tiny corrections.
I still reach for the phone too quickly. I still feel the urge to check, plan, and manage before the day has really started. But more often than before, I notice myself doing it.
I say no a little sooner.
I let some moments pass without needing to shape them.
Not perfectly. Not every day. But enough to notice.
Because getting older has taught me something I could not have learned when life was moving faster.
At 45, I would have defined rich differently.
A strong career.
Money in the bank.
A secure future, and room to choose.
Those things mattered. They still matter.
But the richest parts of my life now are the easiest to overlook.
Time with Sheryl, reminded again that I did not get here alone.
A grandchild’s hand in mine.
Family close enough to be part of ordinary days, not just special occasions.
A body that still lets me train, bike, travel, and show up.
A dinner or coffee with a few men who might have stayed home otherwise.
Men I barely knew a year ago who now feel like part of the week.
Most of the time, they are right there in front of me.
I still have restless days.
I still wonder if I am doing enough.
I still miss parts of the old career, when effort was obvious and the next thing was clear.
Nobody graduates from uncertainty.
Not at 30. Not at 60. Probably not at 90.
But I am learning what retirement keeps trying to teach me.
Not how to stop working.
How to stop living somewhere else.
Jim O’Grady writes The Post Game, a newsletter about life in the GoGo years. He lives in White Rock, BC.