It might seem counterintuitive, but I’ve come to realize the trick to enjoying retirement turns out to be doing what I’ve done all my life: keep busy. This has been a while coming, and I’m still figuring out that “keep busy” part. When you work, you keep busy earning a living and then doing all those other things that come with staying alive. In retirement, making money slows down and that work time shifts into volunteering, hobbies, and writing that great American novel you’ve been meaning to write for decades, except you have this really cool idea about a monster hunter in Paris.

This is a list of things I have done more of since retiring:

Writing fiction and trying to get it published. It took about 18 months, but my writing has really ramped up.

Worked more on my art.

Working on that punch list for our house.

Cooking and baking. My wife Jenny still works and when she comes home I think it’s reasonable that I have dinner ready for us. I’ve also become obsessed with baking the perfect chocolate chip cookie.

Volunteering. I’m easing into that. The old habit of not being on boards and committees because of potential conflicts as a reporter is a hard one to shake.

Being a bit more involved in community matters. Reporters also don’t testify at public hearings, but on certain issues I have ventured opinions.

Reading more. I’ve joined a science fiction and fantasy book club which fits in with my other activity of writing science fiction and fantasy.

Managing my health. When you age, and when you retire as you age, keeping your body going is like having a finicky sports car. It turns out there’s a lot of paper work and bureaucracy in just paying the bills and making sure Medicare and supplemental insurance pay those bills which, spoiler alert, they don’t always do.

Looking at this list, and my current state of retirement, I realize I’m a poster boy for Dr. Riley Moynes’ excellent TED talk, “The 4 phases of retirement.”

Dr. Moynes says there are four phases:

Vacation

Sense of loss

Trial and error

Reinvent and repurpose

The vacation phase sounds like what it is. Moynes said: “Freedom, baby!” You get up when you want, do what you want, travel, goof off and catch up on your sleep. I hit that phase running. In the six months after retiring, I traveled to California and Sicily, hiked and skied more and took up new hobbies.

By “sense of loss,” Moynes said that means a loss of routine, a loss of identity, a loss of work relationships, a loss of purpose, and a loss of power or influence. He also cautions against feeling depressed and fearing physical and mental decline.

As a reporter and editor I gained a sense of identity and purpose. I like to think my work had meaning in helping to create a better community. Oddly, because my identity as a writer had been cemented long before I became a reporter, I didn’t lose that sense of purpose in retirement. I just shifted back to what I had been at 30 when I sold my first novel.

I also have to admit that at times I get depressed, and that decline thing? Hoo boy. Right before I retired I got prostate cancer and for the next few years I’ve had to learn how to live with the body and brain that cancer had changed. Like a lot of us, the COVID-19 pandemic beat me up, not from the disease (I didn’t get COVID-19 until 2023), but the societal chaos of a worldwide pandemic.

Now I find myself in Moynes’ phase three. I keep trying new things, like different viewpoints in my fiction. I try to spend less time in the morning doomscrolling and more time writing. I know I need to shake myself out of my introverted existence and connecting with people. Weirdly enough, the chaos of our current political climate has also forced me to interact more with the world.

Moynes’ phase four is reinventing and renewing. People seem happiest when they offer service to others, Moynes said. Huh. Before I retired, I volunteered on the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival Committee, mainly because the Homer News printed its program and I was the liaison for that project. After I left the paper, I stayed on the committee, which has turned out to be delightful.

Retirement also opened up the time to do something I’d wanted to do but couldn’t while I worked: volunteer for the annual shorebird monitoring project. I started that in 2023. For every five days in mid-April and through May I head out to Green Timbers on the Homer Spit and, with a squad of dedicated birders, look for and count birds. In idle moments, we chat and catch up. Who knew citizen science could be fun?

So maybe Moynes is right. Maybe all I need to find bliss in retirement is to go out on a soggy spring morning, walk with friends and find birds.

Michael Armstrong worked at the Homer News for 23 years before retiring in 2022. Reach him at wordfolk@gmail.com or follow him on Bluesky at maarmstrong.bsky.social.