Hi Reader

There's this moment that happens in retirement, usually a few months in, sometimes longer, where you realise something quite uncomfortable.

You can't blame anyone for how you're feeling anymore.

Not your boss, not your colleagues, not the commute, not the workload, not the stress, not the office politics, not the unreasonable deadlines, none of it, because none of that exists in your life now.

If you're bored, that's on you.

If you're lonely, that's on you.

If your days feel empty or pointless or like they're just sort of bleeding into each other with no real structure or meaning, that's on you, too.

And somehow, weirdly, that feels worse than when you could blame work for everything.

At least when life wasn't quite right, you had a clear culprit, now you've removed the culprit and life still isn't quite right, and you're left staring at the possibility that maybe the problem was never work, maybe the problem is you, or your life, or something much harder to fix than just leaving a job.

A quick note before you get into the weeds of this weeks newsletter. I'm going to be taking a 2 week break over the Easter period. It will be nice to have a little rest but the main reason is that my wife is celebrating her 50th birthday and we are doing a number of cool things over the next week or so. I will be back ASAP!

THIS WEEKS SUBJECT IS...

WHAT I'VE NOTICED

I hear variations of this all the time from people who've been retired for a bit.

A guy I spoke with recently, about 18 months in said "When I was working I used to think 'if only I had more time I'd do all these things, I'd be happier, I'd have a better life,' and now I've got all the time and I'm not doing the things and I'm not happier, and I can't blame work anymore so what does that say about me?"

Another person told me: "At work I could always explain why I was tired or irritable or not my best self, it was the workload, the pressure, the difficult people, there was always a reason outside of me, now if I'm in a bad mood or feeling low I have to admit it's just coming from inside, and that's harder to deal with somehow."

And here's what's interesting, these aren't people who regret retiring, they're not sitting there wishing they could go back to work, they're generally glad to be done with it, but they're also struggling with something they didn't expect, the full weight of responsibility for their own happiness now that there's no external thing to blame.

Because when work was the problem, when work was the reason you were tired or stressed or not living the life you wanted, there was always this implicit promise underneath it all, once I leave work, once I retire, then things will be better, then I'll be happier, then I'll have the life I actually want.

But what happens when you leave, and things aren't automatically better, when you're still sometimes bored or lonely or frustrated or unsure what the point of your days is, and you can't point at work anymore as the reason why?

WHAT I THINK IS REALLY GOING ON

Right, so here's what I reckon is happening.

For decades, work was a very convenient scapegoat for basically everything that wasn't quite right in your life.

Not enough time for hobbies, blame work.

Not enough time for relationships, blame work.

Feel stressed, blame work.

Feel tired, blame work.

Life doesn't feel as fulfilling as you'd hoped, well obviously that's because work takes up so much energy and time. Once you retire and work is gone, everything else will fall into place.

And look, work probably was legitimately part of the problem. I'm not saying it wasn't, work does take up enormous amounts of time and energy, and it does create stress, and it does limit what else you can do with your life.

But it was also a very useful explanation for everything, a simple, clear reason why your life wasn't quite what you wanted it to be, and simple, clear reasons are comforting even when they're making you miserable, because at least you know what the problem is.

Then you retire and the simple clear reason is gone, and you're left with something much more complicated and much harder to fix, which is that life is still sometimes boring or lonely or frustrating or unsatisfying and now you have to admit that maybe work wasn't the only problem, maybe there are other things going on, maybe you need to actually build a life rather than just removing the obstacle to having one.

And that's scary because it puts all the responsibility on you, there's no external enemy anymore, no system or boss or workload to fight against, it's just you and your choices and your life and if it's not working you can't blame anyone else.

And here's the really uncomfortable bit, having no one to blame means you have to acknowledge that you have agency, full agency, over your life now, and agency is a double-edged thing, isn't it.

On one hand, it's liberating, you can do what you want, structure your days however you like, make choices based on what matters to you, not what work demands.

But on the other hand it's terrifying, because if you have full agency and your life still isn't quite right then that's on you, you can't hide behind "well I don't have a choice, work demands this," you do have a choice now, loads of choices actually, and if you're not making the choices that lead to the life you want then you have to ask yourself some quite uncomfortable questions about why not.

Are you bad at making choices? Do you not actually know what you want? Are you afraid of getting it wrong? Are you waiting for someone to tell you what to do? Have you spent so long blaming external things for your life that you've never really taken responsibility for building it yourself?

And those questions are hard, much harder than "my job is stressful and that's why I'm not happy," because they require looking at yourself rather than looking at external circumstances, and most of us would rather blame circumstances than blame ourselves.

There's another piece to this that I see a lot, when you had work to blame you also had this built-in excuse for not changing anything else in your life, can't work on your marriage because work is too demanding, can't make new friends because work takes up all your time, can't pursue interests because you're too tired from work.

And some of that was probably true, but it was also a way of avoiding the harder work of actually addressing those things, because as long as work was the problem you could tell yourself "I'll deal with that when I retire, when I have more time and energy."

But now you've retired and you do have the time and energy, and you're still not dealing with it, and you have to confront the fact that maybe it wasn't lack of time that was stopping you, maybe it was fear or inertia or not knowing how or just the fact that making changes is hard regardless of how much time you have.

And that's confronting because it means the work excuse was hiding a lot of avoidance, and now the avoidance is visible, and you can't pretend it's about time or energy anymore, it's about choice, and you're choosing not to make changes, and owning that is uncomfortable.

A QUESTION TO SIT WITH

And now that you can't blame work, what are you left with?

Is it boredom, is it loneliness, is it lack of purpose, is it strained relationships, is it not knowing what to do with yourself, is it feeling like life should be better than this?

And here's the uncomfortable follow-up, what would it mean to take full responsibility for addressing those things instead of waiting for circumstances to fix them or looking for a new thing to blame?

Because here's what I've noticed, the people who struggle most in retirement aren't necessarily the ones with the biggest problems, they're the ones who keep looking for external things to blame instead of accepting that they have agency now, full agency, and that means they're responsible for their own life in a way they haven't been for decades.

And yes, that's heavy, and yes, it's uncomfortable, and yes, it's easier to blame something external than to look at yourself and your choices.

But it's also the only way to actually build a retirement that feels like yours rather than just the absence of work, and at some point, you have to stop blaming and start building, because no one else is going to do it for you.

So what can't you blame work for anymore, and what are you going to do about that now that the responsibility is entirely on you?

P.S. - If you've been struggling with this, with having no one to blame and realising the responsibility is all on you now, hit reply and tell me about it. Sometimes it helps just to admit how uncomfortable that feels.