We are always looking for great blogs about retirement. Syd has a wonderful perspective on adjusting to a retired life. Find the link to her blog after this post.

December 04, 2008
No More Performance Reviews
One of the really great things about being retired is not having to subject myself to the annual torture known as the performance review. Each year, right about now, I would be writing a page of babble about what I accomplished during the year. I'm so happy to instead be writing a page of babble about why I hated writing that page of babble.

Tonight, I'm taking a moment to savor the fact that I am no longer required to suffer this indignity. Besides avoiding tax season, this is about the best part of not working anymore.


When you've worked in the same job for nearly two decades, it becomes more and more demoralizing each year to participate in this exercise. What did I do this year? How was it different than the gazillions of years that came before? And how on earth do I make it sound important?


And all the time you're really asking yourself, why do we even go through this charade each year? I know it's irrelevant to my raise and bonus, irrelevant to my professional development, and most importantly, unrelated in any way whatsoever to my actual job performance. I'm not entirely convinced anyone actually even read my little essay.


For me, all it ever did was make me crankier than I already was at the holidays. It always felt futile, and for the last few years, it just reminded me how much I lusted after the emancipation of retirement.


I'm coming up on a year of retirement soon, and am more excited about accomplishments of this year than I ever was about my occupational accomplishments. I've read stacks of books, written pages of blog posts, and painted wall after wall of my house. The hours I spent tending my garden, even cleaning my house, produced real, tangible results. I've had the time to take some wonderful writing classes, and to read up on history I never really learned, and economics topics I did learn, but since forgot. Now that's some personal development I feel good about.


I guess the only downside is I'm not getting a raise this year. In fact, the enterprise that is mainly responsible for my income now, namely the stock market, has had a very bad year. It won't be paying any bonuses either.



http://retiredsyd.typepad.com/retirement_a_fulltime_job/