{"id":43539,"date":"2025-01-25T00:01:36","date_gmt":"2025-01-25T08:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=43539"},"modified":"2026-06-05T09:14:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T09:14:21","slug":"happily-retired-take-the-quiz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/happily-retired-take-the-quiz\/","title":{"rendered":"Happily Retired? Take the Quiz"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"happily-retired-hikers-at-Pt.-Reyes\"<\/a>
Happily retired means taking a day off to hike the length of the Chimney Rock Trail in Marin county with your two hiking buddies, who are also happily retired and don’t mind that you are lollygagging and falling way behind them on the trail. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/header>\n
Are You Happily Retired?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Retired, I’ve decided, is an attitude. It’s a state of mind — a state of equanimity. And you can have that state of mind whether you’ve clocked your last forty-hour work-week — or you’re still holding down a job.<\/p>\n

I’m still working. I spend several days a week slogging away at my writing.\u00a0I used to insist to friends and family that, no, I’m not retired.<\/p>\n

A couple of years ago, however, I realized that, although I’m acting like a hard-working working person, I’m thinking and feeling like that proverbial retired guy contentedly watching the world go by from his rocking chair on the front-porch .<\/p>\n

So — how do you know when you’ve achieved that equanimous, happily retired, rocking-chair state of mind?<\/p>\n

Take the quiz:<\/p>\n

1. Have You Mastered the Art of Doing Nothing?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Retired means that you have reacquainted yourself with the art of doing nothing, a skill you lost right around the time you entered adulthood. This means that when your spouse, hard at work on the New York Times crossword puzzle (the Sunday one), throws out a word: \u201cFive letters beginning with SPR, \u2018Big name in lean dieting,\u2019\u201d you stop in your tracks.<\/p>\n

Instead of telling him you\u2019re too busy, you\u2019ve got to load the dishwasher and get started on your income taxes (and you do have to do both those things), you pause and take a guess, \u201cSprat?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cYes!\u201d he says. Then he adds, \u201cGood one,\u201d because he, like you, has mellowed over the years and doesn\u2019t mind throwing a compliment your way.<\/p>\n

2. Have You Ditched Ambition?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Retired means that you\u2019re not ambitious any more. You\u2019ve managed to lose your ambition. Wasn\u2019t easy losing it, but you managed to quit thinking of everything you do in terms of where it\u2019s going to get you on the professional ladder, vis-a-vis your colleagues and competitors.<\/p>\n

You no longer have to do this or that or anything else to achieve your lifetime goals. You\u2019ve achieved your goals, and if you haven\u2019t achieved them, you\u2019ve jettisoned them and you\u2019re totally good with that.<\/p>\n

\"happily-retired-take-the-quiz\"<\/a>
Jon was very happily retired. He would do the entire Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle. I’d do the occasional word he’d toss my way. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
3. Is There Food on the Table?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Before he died, Jon and I managed to squirrel away enough money so that I can easily make it to age 90, or 100 even, without hitting up the kids for grocery money.<\/p>\n

Which means that I don\u2019t\u00a0have<\/em> to do anything productive anymore. Like generations of retirees before me, I am truly and amazingly free of the preoccupation that has dogged human beings since the beginning of time (and the time clock) — survival.<\/p>\n

Ironically, embracing that freedom can be tough for the very people who have lucked out and attained that comfy place in life. After decades of hard work, nose to the grindstone, it\u2019s isn\u2019t easy to give up your favorite obsessions \u2014 efficiency, big goals, status, and (my all-time favorite) the to-do list.<\/p>\n

4. Have You Found Your Peeps?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Retired means that you now know who your people are \u2014 maybe it\u2019s the second husband and his kids. Or the college sweetheart you rediscovered when you were both widowed. Maybe it\u2019s your siblings or the group of friends that has stuck by you over the years.<\/p>\n

For me, it’s the dozens of people who phoned or visited or sent cookies in the weeks after Jon died. Sometimes it takes a death in the family to find out how many people care about you.<\/p>\n

5. Has That Pesky Biological Clock Stopped Ticking?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Best of all, your biological clock is not ticking any more. You either had those kids or you didn\u2019t. And if you did, they\u2019ve flown the coop and they can pay their own way now. Pretty much.<\/p>\n

6. Do You Know Where You Are?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Retired means you know where you belong on the planet, and that is, right here, right now, in your own skin and not in anyone else\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Calculating Your Happily Retired Score<\/strong>:\u00a0It doesn’t matter. Be happy.<\/p>\n

More about getting up in years at “Am I Still Old? Or Am I Elderly Now?”<\/a><\/em>\u00a0 If you feel like you’ve already taken this little quiz, maybe you did. A version of it was posted here back in 2015, when I had just finished writing my first book and was thinking about the next.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"happily-retired-doing-crossword\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Retired, I’ve decided, is an attitude. It’s a state of mind, a state of equanimity. You can have that attitude whether you’re still working or you’ve clocked your last forty-hour work-week.\u00a0 Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,226],"tags":[103,2949,34,82,1484,1985,2950,2951,575],"class_list":["post-43539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","category-older-and-older","tag-aging","tag-ambition","tag-dont-miss","tag-on-the-funny-side","tag-retired","tag-retirement","tag-rocking-chair","tag-success","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43539"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48615,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43539\/revisions\/48615"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}