Two months prior to my retirement, I decided I’d try my hand in direct sales. Sales of any kind was completely foreign to me. I found a brand new company with what I thought was a good mission and decided to hop on. I thought it would give me something to do to after retirement that would compensate for working full time all of those years.
While I was still working at my nursing job, I was able to quickly develop a team of women who also loved the mission of the company.
Little did I know that to be successful in direct sales, there was a lot, and I mean a lot of work involved, and while I was still nursing, work hard I did. I’d do home parties in my evenings and on my weekends, set up as a vendor at markets, and coach my team with any spare time I had left (being a Home Care Nurse for the last 4 years of my career meant mostly day shifts with only an occasional evenings or weekend run).
I rationalized all of this extra work as evidence that I was getting my ducks in a row.
I thought that after all of those years nursing, I could walk away cold turkey and never look back. After all, I’d have my direct sales business to carry me through – what else could I possibly need?
What I ignored was that there is so much more involved in retirement than having a plan B for busyness. There’s a mindset that needs to be reached and I hadn’t planned for, or even paid attention to that reality.
My co-workers who were retiring were immediately keeping busy and fulfilled with their children and grandchildren living near by. Others had retired spouses who were at home. I had neither of those luxuries. With hubs still on the road and our grandkids an almost 5-hour drive away, much of my immediate retirement time was spent alone.
Before I retired, I did no research on possible issues post-retirement. How hard could retirement be? All it meant was stopping working, right? I wish I had read more articles like the one in the link below.
“Sadly, retirement planning, in many circumstances, has become nothing more than planned procrastination.”
― Richie Norton, The Power of Starting Something Stupid: How to Crush Fear, Make Dreams Happen, and Live without Regret
Radically Retired 