I think I agree with you! I am years from retirement, but I work at an organization where we have many senior volunteers doing production of solar powered fixed tuned radios for the Mission field...they are such hard workers! Many of them say they keep busy because once they stop, they have a hard time getting going again!

So ya, I think you shouldn't consider yourself retired, think of it as a career change!

I think I agree with you! I am years from retirement, but I work at an organization where we have many senior volunteers doing production of solar powered fixed tuned radios for the Mission field...they are such hard workers! Many of them say they keep busy because once they stop, they have a hard time getting going again!

So ya, I think you shouldn't consider yourself retired, think of it as a career change!

It depends on the person and their former occupation.

Graeme, you have clearly illustrated that for YOU retirement has been bad for your health. The passion to teach is still with you. Perhaps it might help to find two days a week doing voluntary work in the teaching field. I remember that my dad, a teacher, did voluntary work teaching migrants English and felt "useful" again.

My husband had been an electrical engineer, and enjoyed two days a week in retirement working in the computer field for disabled folks. Sadly, as he has since died, I think when it comes to the major illnesses genetics and old age itself are what count the most.

As for me, I was one of the many people who saw work as something to do to make enough money to live on. At last I can do what I want - and with whom, and life is more rewarding now that I'm retired. 

My father died within one year of retirement.  He did not want to retire.  

The last year was sad because he was bored.  He started sleeping a lot.  He seemed to sit at home and watch others live their lives.   He did not feel useful.

Graeme all the retired teachers substitute teach in my area.  It is the best of both worlds because you do work a little less than part time and it does not affect your pension.  And you have lots of time off to pursue hobbies.

 Is retirement bad for your health?

I guess it depends on what you have left to do.

Very bad to have nothing left to do. Might as well die so that there would be one more funeral to go to.

Sounds like it isn't working for you Graeme.  It  doesn't sound like the move from Montreal to Moncton in the retirement phase of your life was good either.  Had you stayed in Montreal you may be having a better time but you're having a hard time finding things to stimulate you in Moncton.  Retirement may well kill you if it's boring.

its not retirement but laziness which can happen at any age ..... you gotta keep active instead of just sitting in a window and feeding pigeons ....

I had retirement thrust on me because of disability.  I also had the 'empty nest' compounded  by the loss of my wife.  It meant re-defining myself and setting new goals.  I am finishing some further graduate studies.  I am trying to recover my French I knew as a youth and haven't used since I worked in Quebec over 30 years ago.  Men, for better or worse, identify with their work.  It got me thinking, "Why do I have to BE something; why can't I just BE?'  I used to be a Human Do-ing; I'm now a Human Be-ing.  At first it was frustrating.  I used to utter, 'Tabernak', more often than I like to.  Now, I laugh at the world, at my disability, at my pain, at my adult kids, and at the news.  I even laugh at myself.  I recently met a guy from my childhood who had been the school bully and laughed in his face.  He didn't know what to do.  I should have been a comic.  I've traced many branches of my genealogy back to the 1500's in Europe.  I'm descended from a whole bunch of strangers.  I'm also looking forward to being a grandfather.  C'mon, kids, start cranking them out!   I even started singing all the verses to 'En roulant my boule' - like I did as a kid.  It was fun.

I think it can be if not handled properly.  I also think it is bad moreso with men than with women.

Retirement is thrust onto us and our generation is healthier and living longer so we are retiring by the last generation's standards when we really have a few more years of life left in us.

are we really living longer or just taking longer to die ?

Graeme, what a remarkable difference in the way you felt walking towards the school and then actually teaching.  Sounds like it would be win-win if you were able to do more teaching as the students would be fortunate to have you there.

I can't say much about retirement.  But have noticed that it affects people differently.  My dad did contract work for a number of years after retiring and that worked well for him.  He had hobbies but needed something more.

TL

Some people , in retirement, need more than others. Graeme, does the move to Moncton have to be permanent?

lots of useful ideas here.

Staying in Montreal would have been a problem for two reasons.  I don't think most Canadian understand the deliberate destruction of the English community in Montreal. Over a quarter million moved in just a few years - and the career opportunities of those who remained were severely limited. Even speaking French fluently might not help. I  had three, young children to think of. (I have friends who are so bitter at the failure of Canada to act or even to notice what was going on that they have left Canada, and would happy to see the whole place break up.)

The other reason is that much of my activity as a speaker was in the Jewish community. Largely English, it suffered the same crippling emigration. As well, militant zionists have been able to get control of major Jewish organizations like Bnai Brith. They are highly organized, and they do not permit any criticism of any sort of anything Israel does. When I left, the word was already going out that people like me were not to be invited. The rule also applied to any Jew who dared to question what was going on. They became "anti-semitic Jews". One of them, an old friend, used to be president of Bnai Brith. But he's now an anti semitic jew. another married couple of long acquaintance are much maligned though they regularly attended a very conservative synagogue, and have actually lived in Israel for some ten years now.

With bigotry coming from two sides, Montreal was no longer attractive.

As to moving, I hate to put the kids through that again. And my wife would also have to find work. and, of course, the cost would be pretty heavy for me after the disasters of this past summer. And, at best, I'd be buying a pig in a poke again.

Somehow, I think I have to make this place work. But it is hard. And I need the human activity, not only because i So much enjoy it, but because I need it to stimulate my own thinking.  but stimulated thinking is not in much demand here.

Sounds a bit like you're grieving the loss of your vibrant & busy life in Montreal, graeme.  That can certainly leave one's spirit feeling drained, and definitely can affect health too.   Speaking of which - I hope you're taking care of yourself in that regard, after that recent episode.  Those kids of yours need their Dad around to keep pulling them out of snowbanks!!

I would think that there might be some interesting things going on at Mount Allison ... maybe Alumni lecture series or something like that?  Or could you audit a course starting in January?  Often universities permit retired folk to audit for free - must be something there that could get your mind working a bit - and students do love to argue as I recall! 

Or what about your local library or art gallery - what's up in those places?  I would think Moncton must have some events going on ... different from Montreal, but who knows, if you keep an open mind & try to not compare too much, you might find something enjoyable. 

nothing happens in the local library. that much surprised me after working so long with the Eleanor London Library in Montreal The Eleanor London is a library named after its long time director who made it stunningly active and exciting - even by the standards of its largely Jewish clientele.

As to attending university courses - well - in the very near future, reader's digest should be carrying an article by me saying universities are utterly incompetent teaching institutions, and most of their courses a waste of time. I get bored enough listening to other people's lectures -  I'd be bored to tears in a university. And once my article appears, I will have few friends in the university world.

I did speak to the chairman of Canadian Studies at a local university (Mount Allison) a few years ago. I had designed a course on history and leisure in Canada - the only course, like it, so far as I know, in Canada, and one of the few in the world. It proved highly successful for twenty years at Concordia - and I thought Mount A might be interested.

What I got from the chairman was a lecture on  how Canadian studies was entirely different from history, and how - implied - I would not understand it.

I did not bother to tell him I had been chairman of Canadian studies at Concordia, had been on the national executive of it for three years, and was a long time friend of the man who founded the movement for Canadian Studies. I also knew his talk about how it was entirely different from history was a crock.

I really am not enamoured of universities.

I might try to start a current events group at the local Y for high school students. What is really needed for them down here is a much broader exposure to the world than a small city can give them..

Okay then - better stay away from the university!  You might not be able to run fast enough to escape

Maybe that library is just waiting for you to come along & start something wonderful, graeme. 

The current events club sounds like it might fly ... hope you'll follow that up.

Have you been involved at all with the Tantramar Heritage Trust out there?  Might be some interesting history connections for you.   I see they have a book launch coming up on Nov. 25.

The thing is, Montcon will never be Montreal, or even close to it.  It's its own place.  Of course I know you know this in your head, but perhaps not yet in your heart.   Seems your sadness of leaving your beloved city behind is perhaps colouring your view of Moncton - seeing more limitations than possibilities perhaps.   Just a thought.  

Could you offer some lectures yourself in the Church Hall, for instance. maybe there are many who are interested but don't know where to go.

I've suggested the church group to local ministers. They don't seem interested. at least, I've had nothing I could call a response.

I get some interest from the Y, perhaps because I've had experience in working with Y groups.

It's very strange to come from years of people asking me to speak and even throwing rather large sums of money at me to do it - and now to be in a place where there's no interest at all. Just a few years ago, I was paid two thousand to speak for twenty minutes to a conference of international lawyers. Here, if I paid the two thousand there would still be no interest.

carolla, you may well be right. I still would really like to do something useful here, but it's hard when nobody wants you to. the key is to do something useful.

Greetings!

I hope some of your leads turn into something that will challenge, stimulate, and meet your intellectual needs graeme.  

I don't know much about Moncton, so I don't have any suggestions there - I hope the opportunities for you to continue to use your teaching skills arise again.

You talked about public speaking - is it possible that you could to travel to other places for speaking engagements?

Hope, peace, joy, love ...

Perhaps your standards are impossibly high ..... you have to form a group where there is an interest and so far it seems that you are interested only in people who have your interests ..... maybe you need to look at things from their level .... you know that whole can't see the forest from the tree thing.

the assumption that im getting also is that you seem to think in terms of people below yourself isn't it possible that there are people way above your level that feel exactly the same way that you do about your ideas ?

ah, jesouhaite, you're so reliable - and predictable.

I've spent my life where most people are. I was never an academic behind ivied walls. I was daily on PrIvate radio. that's not fancy pants. You have to reach a mass audience. ditto with writing a newspaper column. I did most of two book for reader's digest, and several articles for it. RD doesn't cater to the intellectual upper crust.

So your assumptions, as usual, are bozo.

So your assumptions, as usual, are bozo.

Actually you just proved my point ...... see none of that would impress me much less the folks in Moncton no matter how bozo they might be .....

nothing would impress you - period. you are an attention seeker. and, alas, irrelevant. that's a sad combination. I, too, have become irrelevant, though, so I can understand your feelings of inadequacy.

nothing would impress you - period

Not true at all let's just say that I'm not EASILY impressed .... say Stephen Hawkins would impress me  ... something along that league

the rest is easy to see through

besides everyone eventually becomes irrelvant some would say that it has something to do with the decline of the patriarchy my social worker buddy  says that older men are some the most  anger driven people that he knows because they are no longer in charge of  anything and no one listens to them anymore they have no more authority or standing they have become almost invisible except maybe at the bingo halls of life ....

it's inevitable at least so long as they don't challenge themselves ... step outta their comfort zone ...

I wish i knew how to have feelings of inadequacy ..... it's tough being  narcissistic i can't help myself at all

Graeme, you could  set up a Website or wouldn't that work?

 Graeme, 

it seems you are blessed with  a curse (or cursed with a blessing?) of being smarter than your average bear.  I hope something works out for you. Thank goodness for the internet or you'd be REALLY isolated!  That website idea isn't so bad.

Graeme it does sound as if retirement is causing you great stress and the accomanying health problems.

Moncton is a small city and you don't sound very happy there, in any of the times you have mentioned it.  In fact generally you speak very disparaginly of it.

Perhaps the choice is to leave and find a larger city.  I know your wife also had work related trouble there so i doubt she will pine for Moncton.  Your kids will adapt to whereever, kids do.  SO first I would consider leaving.

If not, then I would look at what you want to do.  I assume as your wife works that you are now the "house husband " and chief cook and bottle washer.  Kids, lunches, meals.......  That can only fill so much time.

I think there are options. 

Senior homes need volunteers and many might like a weekly history lecture/discussion.  Set up a schedule to do one a day.

Offer wood working classes or art classes if you have that ability.

Offer book discussions.....  Seniors like to do lots.

Substitute teach . 

Ask the principal to start a current events club after school or some such discussion with the kids. 

Offer your Canadian studies course to the high school.  As a history course option 

Offer these same options to the elementary schools.  A weekly "discuss history with Graeme" lecture that rotates through all the elementary schools, grade 7 and 8  so that you do one lecture each day.

Get back to the library or the community center and start up your class/discussion group.  Expect about 2 people at first and let it grow.  Make flyers, get churches to advertise in their weekly bulletins, put up a flyer in the grocery store.......

If you are going to live in Moncton then you can get involved.

 Graeme, I am thinking that you must have had some good experiences in the maritimes and that these experiences led you to retire there. When did the maritimes start to become a drag for you?

Ah, last pointe, you offer some very helpful ideas. and you touch a sore spot. One of my great retirement ambitions had been to become a great, Chinese chef. I do make most of the meals for the family, so it seemed a natural. But do you know - kids will not eat anything unless they have eaten it a thousand times before? So it's pizza or "Oh, no, not lemon chicken again." :I''m allergic to won ton soup."

Moncton is an attractive place. The problem you find is one I have seen in rural areas, villages, small cities wherever I have been. There is nothing wrong with the people. They are quite decent, likeable, astonishingly courteous.

But there are all very much alike. There is none of that difference that comes together to spark interest and acativity and challenge. For the kids, the ones with ambition go into the army or the RCMP, or maybe a trade. Nothing wrong with that. The problem comes when it gets as far out of balance as it does here. There is little sense of anything in the world beyond the army, the RCMP and plumbing.

I was astonished in a local school to learn the low completion rate. These are nice kids, and they're as bright as those I've seen in any school. But there is just no sense of what the possibilities are.

I shall certainly follow up on the ideas I've seen in your post and in others. There is something useful to be done here. I'd like to get it started.

Hi Graeme,

I retired from a wildly rewarding and ego-stroking career and expected to have some pangs.  I expected to miss being looked up to for advice and "fixing" messes and was quite floored that I didn't miss it at all.

It's understandable that young children won't venture into foods that are too different, but why can't you serve them something different than you and your wife are eating?  You can't belive how much joy I've found in learning traditional recipes from Thailand, India, etc. 

I can understand your list of circumstances that make it seem as though there is little stimulation or joy where you are, but what I hear is that you don't want to grow.  Come on, Graeme, you have things to learn where you are from the people you are with. 

Satisfy your intellectual side with a project of your own but don't ignore what the universe is knocking you over the head with....there is more to you than your intellectual gifts.  Find out who else you are.  You might discover a balance that astounds you.  Cheers to you, Graeme...

Graeme, from one fish out of water to another,  I suggest you pursue the Y programme.  Small communities do contain individuals who are seekers.  They feel just like you, isolated and apart from others. 

There may not be many but they exist and your acknowledgement of their needs will be a lifesaver.   You will have to find and convince them to join because their sense of isolation and difference will make them unwilling to expose themselves, again, to ridicule.

Even if you only reach one person that will be a success -

for both of you.

LB

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.           Bessie Stanley, Success

two very diffferent posts, but both interesting and with something to offer.

alas, ab, my wife is a pickier eater than the kids are. I would have to prepare three sets of suppers to do the job.

I would like to write, but the market is really weak. reader's digest Canada, if I am guessing correctly, is in serious financial trouble, and that was a very big market.

Graeme;

Are you a member of the United Church?  THey have a lay worship leader certificate and that does not take long to get and you could go around preaching in your presbytery?

I did look at it, and was very interested because I have often led services in churches - particularly United, of course, but also Unitarian and, god forgive me, Presbyterian. Indeed, so great is my sinfulness that I shall this evening be teaching a confirmation class in a Catholic church.

The problem is it takes three years,much of it to teach me what I already know. I would even have to take a speaking course - though over some thirty years I delivered well over a thousand speeches and could frequently draw top dollar. In all modesty, I t hink I can safely say I can speak as well as the average UC minister.

Most of all, I don't want to wait for three years.

Graeme, why don't you write a book? about all of this?

I thought that course was only a year Graeme.  

Oh, I have been writing something for my kids, mostly two or three page anecdotal stuff. But the idea is to catch the spirit of my growing up. As an offshoot, I'm now working on a short piece about why professors can have so much education, and still be such irrational asses. I think I begin to understand why this happens.

I also write short stories for my grandchildren. It's a lot of fun.

graeme

Have you thought of blogging graeme?  Check out the Spark podcasts on CBC radio, they have many tips for bloggers.  Some bloggers get many followers and you can interact with people all over the world, if you are good and interesting you can even make money off it.  You seem to already know a lot of people who might be interested in your blog and you can spread out your audience from there.  Just a thought.

that's a thought. I have a friend in Montreal was fired after at least twenty years as a radio host on a late night show. So, to get back in circulation, he started a blog. It seems to be working, too.

graeme

Graeme, the problem is not you, it's Moncton (seriously). My memories of Moncton were that it was an industrial distribution point with a glorious railroad hertiage, beset by lingiusitic challenges (the current sign discussion in Dieppe is the same srgument as was heard thirty years go).

The community I live in in Ontario has the highest proportion of people over age 65 in Canada (yes, more than Victoria!). There is an active seniors community at all levels. One of the best groups is the Bluewater Association for Lifelong Learning. www.seniorslearning.com/index.html .

Your experience is a good caveat for all of us over 55. Choose carefully where you retire. It may not be the Shangra-la you think!

I wish I   could dispute that.

there comes a point at which you recognize that a thread has said all it is likely to say, And so it is with this one. I want to thank all of you who took the trouble to write. It has been most helpful. and a comfort to know that people cared enough to write.

I am glad it helped - you are valued.

AND smarter than your average bear.  (Sorry, Yogi Bear is playing right now)

well, thank you both. but yogi is not an average bear. (Do most people still know where he got his name? Or is that already in the forgotten past?)

I know you've 'wrapped' this thread, Graeme, but I want to add one more comment: there is a lot of research out there now that suggests exactly what you are saying: retirement is boring if all you do is sit around:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8352220.stm

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-10/apa-pww101309.php

(These articles are posted on the Church Leadership Network, along with a request to comment on what a Retirement Resource for United Church ministry personnel would contain: http://churchleadership.united-church.ca/)

The proof is in the teaching assignment you described at the outset. 

And I have lived in Montreal (so I know exactly what you are saying about "culturism").

I also have worked for and with enough 'church people' and others to know that (as the movie says) "There's no fate but what you make."

Schools all over Canada are begging for volunteers to assist with all manner of tasks; the governments have failed our public education system and reduced it to the children's equivalent of factory farms.  There are opportunities in Moncton, in New Brunswick, in the Maritimes...

Or, contact me at church house and let me know what the HR Unit can do to mitigate the downside of retirement for ministry personnel.

No, I don't know how my beloved Yogi got his name...tell me.  I still think you instinctively knew your next passion, Graeme....cooking.  I also still think you should get by any of the challenges to go there.  Why couldn't you use the same protein source for the whole family but take yours to gourmet level...once you perfect this newest passion you could combine it with your teaching skills and have a whole different "retirement" passion.   

Now here's a thought. Write a cookbook and call it "The Retirees Cookbook" - with lots of humorous incidents about trying to introduce "exotic" dishes to children and other less adventurous retirees than your good self.

Hey, I'd buy one.