Deciding on retirement.

Update added on 31.08.2022.

I started looking forward to retirement when I was in my early fifty. It seems a bit too early then, considering that the government had moved the official retirement age from 55 to 62, with eligibility to extend to 67. Back then, I was sort of losing motivation, had a feeling of uncertainty of my competency because of changes of management, organizational restructuring, and the blurring definition of role and responsibilities.

I had thought of switching job, but then reckoned that at that age adapting on a new unfamiliar job or in a new environment is a gamble that I am uncertain will be a change for the better.  Early retirement is not an option as I was not financially ready.  I was frustrated with the lack of option.

I thought I was experiencing sort of burnout. I shared my plight with colleagues, and quickly discovered from their responses that I was definitely not alone. This helped somehow.  On hindsight, I realised that it was not a burnout that I was experiencing, but just the frustration and anxiety of unfamiliar management style. What I needed then was to adapt and adjust to blend in. Anyway, I managed to cope until official retirement age.

Six months before my 62^nd birthday, my superior called and asked for my decision. Retirement was not an easy decision even in a not so satisfying job situation.

Financially, I believe I have enough saving, the consideration is in the acceptance of not having an income. This is especially difficult because of the significant jump in pay which I got for the recent promotion. There is also worry about loss of medical coverages.

Socially, most of my waking hours is spend on working.  Workplace in a way became a place where I socialized most. It is the works that kept me active mentally and physically. Besides, even after working hours, a big portion of socializing are still with colleagues.  Retirement will means cutting of a big portion of my social life. It is like a new phase of live, fully self-expense with zero income and, that may need quite a bit of adjustment.

After a brief consideration, I reckoned that income will stopped and lifestyle changes will happened at some point of times, if not now. I decided to retire.

Once the decision was made and announced, the remaining six months was the most relaxing of my entire working life.  Workload or rather unloading the workload was a breeze, as I had diligent colleague who were already familiar with my works, and some in fact had been working parallel.  They took initiative in covering my role.   Except for some checking for concurrences, they hardly bother me.  I was left with so much free time that I was able to indulge in some reflection and actively participate in contributing articles and commenting in various topics that were posted in the company Workplace @ Facebook. (Workplace was then a new initiative by the company to encourage knowledge sharing, information dissemination and mass communication).

It was so relaxing, and I wish that times was not flying that fast, but eventually the final day arrived. Well, that’s it, I became a retiree.

After retirement.

I retired from my job in December 2019, and that was when novel Corona virus (COVID-19) was in the news, when China locked down Wuhan city in an effort to contain it spread. However, tried as they might had, it was a tad too late.  Very soon, by February 2020, clusters of infections were reported in various countries.  By early March 2020 World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic. In Singapore, the Disease Outbreak Response System Condition (DORSCON) was raised from Yellow to Orange. It imply that the disease is severe, and can spread easily from person to person but had yet to spread widely. Then, soon ‘Circuit Breaker’ aka stay-at home order was implemented, and if you need to leave home for whatever reason, wearing of masks became compulsory.

From then until the order was lifted recently, life take on a new norm. Mask needs to be always on the face whenever you leave home, always being wary of strangers or even friend standing too close to you, no eating out, no visiting, communication and entertainment is mainly through phone, either call or messaging, Facebook and You tube, etc.. 

But frankly, besides some inconvenience, it does not have much impact on me, the disruption in my routine is minimal, simply because I am more of an introvert, rather awkward in face to face socializing. I may enjoy good food, but I am a “eat to live” type, definitely not a gourmet, so simple food and eating-in were never a problem.  And though I enjoy leisure oversea trip, I am not enthusiastic about it. I am comfortable with spending times watching TV, YouTube or Facebook clips, or reading novels, and of course chatting with friends in WhatsApp, which was how the decision of writing this blog was hatched.

I started my blog enthusiastically, but after a short while, I run short of idea and also find it tedious trying to assemble bits and pieces of memory into a meaningful if not interesting article.  It was difficult also because I was wary of disclosing too much of personal details and getting into unnecessary troubles for saying the wrong things.  

After the pieces regarding my work experiences, I thought of writing about life after retirement. But because of COVID-19 restriction, most of my times was spent in routines such as, chatting through WhatsApp, watching YouTube/Facebook video clips, housekeeping and cooking.  It is really hard to find interesting things to share. 

Anyway, just to begin, I am a Chinese Singaporean, brought up in a family that worshipped Taoism and Buddhism mixed.  My late parent prayed to Taoist idol and practices some Buddhist rituals. Myself, I used to think that I am a free thinker, an atheist. I became a Christian later because my wife’s God would not allow her to marry a non-Christian.  Anyway, there is no loss in compromising, or rather conforming.   Christianity do have its values and benefits.  I am blessed to have new friends and get chances to interact with interesting people whom I otherwise could only read about in multimedia, newspapers or watch from afar. They includes CEO and senior Managers of prestigious firm, businessman, teacher, university professor, and ex-minister, etc. The Church congregation is a mixed of people in all walk of life, with a high percentage of wealthy worshipers. I reside in a HDB flat apartment, dine at hawker centre and take public transport. If you are familiar with Singaporean wealth demographic and categorization, that will give you an idea of my wealth status.

Initially, my view was that the poorer members were there to seek God blessing for provision, protection, healing, etc..  I am not sure about the rich, they are obviously well provided, so my guess is that it could be anxiety, concerns of security of their wealth and status and probably they had yet to find happiness and thus is seeking for other purpose of life other than acquiring wealth. After embracing Christianity, I learn that there is more to it. Whether it is as sceptic suggested, the manipulation of carrot and stick, reward and fear, or as Christ followers believed through unquestioning faith, generally, it is in the hope of gaining eternal life in paradise, and avoiding eternal damnation in hell.

Reading the Bible also helps to improve language proficiency. Besides, the Bible is a complicated and thought provoking book, massive to digest, trying to understand it will actually require jogging the brain quite a bit.

The Bible is made up of 66 books. 39 of an Old Testament and 27 of the New Testament. These books were written by various authors (or rather records of words of various protagonists, saints and prophets), compiled and translated, and sometimes corrected by scholars since thousand or two years ago. To this day, argument about their interpretation is still on going. That’s caused it to spawn numerous Bible manual and reading guide. Some claimed the words in the Bible should be taken literally while others believe they are figure of speech. And some take it as a mix, depending on what ones want them to comply with. That I think is probably the reason of the many denominations of Christianity. Each focus on a certain interpretation of the doctrines and practices that they claimed are vital to the fundamental of the belief and form their circle of believers. There are also some that sway too much from the main stream and were relegate as cult.

Recently, during the COVID-19 period, Catholic Pope and Anglican Bishop cited Bible verses to encourage believers to get vaccinated. But there were also well-known Evangelical and Pentecostal priests who cited other Bible verses to warn against vaccination. Both are prayerful people who are respected preachers of the Bible, trusted messenger of God words and Bible teacher. Even in the Church that I attended, the interpretation is divided, I received WhatsApp messages from senior prayerful friends who warned against vaccination, even though our Church encourages it. I naively responded quoting the Pope and Bishop statement (extracted for Google article) and shared my personal opinion, but soon apologized after getting some lashing for being ignorant.  Honestly, I have no idea who is right. How should the Bible verses be interpreted? Why were the advices from the same Bible pole apart?  Can’t be both parties were correct, because that will mean that verses in different book or chapters are contradicting each other.  I guess only God knows, but mysteriously, and as usual, He is not telling. Eventually, I choose to make peace by agreeing to disagree.  It’s like saying; yeah, yeah you are absolutely right, but I will do it my way. (I think that’s exercising God given Free Will, also a practice mentioned in the Bible).

Okay, that so much about my religion, I shall pause here, take stock in case I get carried away and say the wrong thing.

Pardon me if I had indeed said the wrong thing.

Updated on: 31.08.2022

Generally, I used to procrastinate quite a bit, probably because of indecisiveness or maybe being too careful. I thought it was not all that bad, because holding back and giving thing more thought sometimes help to avoid trouble or embarrassment.  Of course the downside is that there are times when opportunities were wasted.

I thought that after retiring from my job, I would have a lot of times to enjoy the activities that I was passionate about. I thought I could tidy my house, make some improvement, redecorate and beautify it. I thought about spending some times to reorganize the potted plants that I had placed messily at my corridor. I thought I could give them better care and prune them regularly to keep them healthy and pleasant looking. I also thought that I could use some of times to visit place of interest, or local attraction that I have not been to for along times, and about spending some times to exercise regularly to keep fit or at least stay active and healthy.  I also had the intention to take up some self-improvement courses and learn more about internet and blogging. There were a lot of thought, no real planning, and I was assuming that I have limitless times after retiring from my job.

But, weeks and months after retirement, those thoughts remain as thoughts, it was hard to get motivated. I don’t feel any urgency and I was always planning to do them the next day because I believe that there is plenty of times tomorrow. So instead, I spend most of my time idling, fiddling with my mobile phones, watching YouTube and Facebook video clips, messaging friends, cross forwarding WhatsApp video clips.  It took me quite a while to realize that I am a chronic procrastinator, and was actually letting times run my life.  I lack self-control, I need to get moving. I started off with tidying the house, but get bored after a short while, I excused myself from pursuing the thought of redecorating or beautifying the house.  After all, the house is already more than 20 years old, as long as I kept it clean with routine vacuuming and regular mopping once or twice a week, it should be enough.  Anyway even without Covid-19 restriction, we hardly have visitors, so why waste time and money in redecorating?  I did some tidying of my potted plant, and started on some stretching exercises, then realized that all these are not really project that needed much times, I could have done them even when I was on the job, working on 44hours work week.  The thinking of couldn’t find enough times was just plain excuse.  I had successfully made myself believed that I was overwhelmed with chores, but the fact is that I mismanaged my times and often messed up tasking priority.  Well, that also explained about this blog timing. I had intended to start blogging before Covid-19 was declared a pandemic, but only got it started more than a year after. Anyway, I made some progress, albeit slowly.  I think that’s okay, after all, this is the beginning of a transition to a new phase of self-paced life, and I supposed that it should not be made stressful by being too ambitious.

Blogging actually was not my passion, I did it for mental activities, as a challenge, and out of curiosity to find out more about website creation and internet posting, and also to find a purpose for my PC which otherwise would be collecting dust.

But blogging is not that easy, and getting stuck in composing article can be rather frustrating. I googled for idea, not only about writing a blog, but also for suggestion on retirement activities and what other people do after retiring from their job.

It seems that money was the central subject. Retirement was simply defined as a transition of life from accumulating money to spending it.  So understandably, there are plenty of suggestion about how to build a safe financial nest before retiring and getting passive income after.  These usually are linked to commercialized site.  There were also those that talk about the need to reinvent a new identity to replace our past identity that was associated with role and responsibilities in our work life. We need to have clarity of purpose, set goal, and then work diligently to achieve it.  They warned about getting bored, then onset of feeling of outliving our usefulness, living aimlessly or loss of purpose and eventual risk of falling into depression. I think these advices make sense, but feel that they were a bit too school textbook like, comprehensive in scope, idealistic, politically accurate but generic.  The only different from school textbook is that they do not come with tutorial.  There were also those that suggest leading a spiritual life, surrender to god, serve god, join a religious ministry, go on mission, etc.

It is not easy to make a meaningful after-retirement plan.  All these suggestions and advices from the various websites have valid points. I totally agree that money is important, it is the basic need for survival, but building the financial nest should start way before retirement not at point of retirement. So after taking care of  that, retirement to me is supposed to be a transition from a life that was being controlled by my 44 hours workweek, associated with fulfilling roles and responsibilities that I was paid for, to a self-paced life, doing project of my own liking, and of course at my own expense.  Setting goal is no more a necessity since I am not competing or striving for career advancement or trying to achieving whatever kind of excellence. Besides, goal is associated with deadline, and deadline produces undesirable stress which I am happy to do without.

I am not a pyschologist, and this is not intended as an advice. It is just my personal belief, that the feeling of disenchantment with life, or onset of depressed feeling of outliving one usefulness is all in the mind. It is what I desired in my mind that made my subconsciousness feel it matter. So, if I don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. If I don’t mind mediocrity, not achieving great thing will not distress me.  I will just go along with whatever come by.  No ambitious goal, no bucket list, not seeking for clarity of life purpose, just be contented with taking small steps, like learning new dishes, baking and making festive delicacies like rice dumplings, mooncakes,  tarts and cookies, etc..  Start on some simple routine physical exercise or stretching, take regular walk in the park to stay healthy.  Just aim to stay active, work on intention, not deadline, (aka own time own target).  If it can’t be accomplished today, I have tomorrow, and if there is no tomorrow then accomplishing or not will not matter anyway. If this lead to retirement into mediocracy, so be it, in fact, it is just sort of a status quo and I am comfortable with it.  I just need to be aware not to be a burden or a nuisance to anyone and be contented with whatever small achievement I could make, and live for myself if not for someone I care about.