One of the best things about retirement is being home every night at supper time. The hours that a UPS driver works are just crazy. Being out on the route til 7:00 every night and missing supper with the family, being gone from the house for 11 to 12 hours every day, not being able to plan even the smallest event after work; that’s nuts. UPS pays well and the check looks oh so good with all that OT on it, but it’s really living to work, not working to live.
UPS has their hands all over you when you work there. They direct you, they schedule your life, they rip at your flesh. We get little tastes of what a real life is like when we are on vacation. We can plan our own day. We can do our own thing. You can’t do that when you’re working.
Retirement is hard on some people because they don’t know what to do with themselves. No schedule. No 5 day grind and overloaded weekends. You don’t have to push to finish a job on Sunday night because you know it will be a week before you can get back to it. It’s not an easy adjustment at first. It’s not easy to lose that feeling that you aren’t getting enough done. For some of us, our self worth has been set by our ability to produce for a long time. When you don’t produce, you feel guilty.
I went through a phase where I got up everyday and put on a brown shirt just so I would feel motivated. Then I’d wolf down some breakfast and lauch into a project. When I needed a break, I’d have to justify it to myself. I’d catch myself looking at my watch. I’d be counting whatever I was handling. I was doing my UPS thing.
As the months have gone by though, I’ve learned to relax a little. Sometimes I purposely sit and do nothing. While gazing up at the passing clouds, I have a little argument with myself. “It’s not a bad thing, I’m not wasting time. Time is not money. I’m living my life.”
But the biggest change has been eating supper between 5 and 6 o’clock every night. It feels so natural. It feels “normal”. Does that mean that life at UPS where you eat supper every night at 8 is not normal? Yes, I thnk that ‘s what that means.