views of retirement

Friend P retires today and I am reminded of how I felt when this happened to me and how people around me reacted. Lots of people asked me, pityingly, what I was going to do. Whilst I had no doubt that retirement was going to be great, I still felt unable to give concerned well-wishers a satisfactory (for me) answer as to what retirement was going to be like.

Looking back now I can give an analogy: retirement can be like opening a store cupboard. For me, as the doors flew open, I was swamped by all the things that poured out of the cupboard and I know that I will never get round to dealing with everything that fell out. But for others, the cupboard is bare.