I didn’t really want to retire, but retirement arrived anyway.
I stayed busy. I filled time. I found things to do. But after a career built on learning, problem-solving, and making sense of complex situations, busyness wasn’t the same as being engaged. Something was missing, and it took a while to name what that was.
At first, I wondered if the problem was loneliness rather than boredom.
So I got a dog.
I’d had dogs before — several, while my kids were growing up — so the mechanics of dog ownership weren’t new. What was new was the household. When a home is full of people, a dog is surrounded by motion, interaction, and variety. When it’s just two people, and one of them is at work, the dynamic shifts.
With a puppy especially, you don’t just have a dog — you become their world.
That brought structure, responsibility, and plenty to learn. I don’t regret it for a moment. But even with a demanding puppy filling the days, the deeper restlessness didn’t disappear.
Around the same time, mobility issues began to set in. Gradually, and then more noticeably, the ease of moving through the world — long walks, casual outings, meeting people simply by being out and about — became harder. That change reshaped daily life in ways I hadn’t fully anticipated.
What surprised me most was what didn’t fade.
My curiosity didn’t diminish — it sharpened.
I’ve always been a lifelong learner. Formal education was woven through my professional life — including completing a master’s degree in my forties and graduating at fifty. Structured learning, research, deadlines, and academic rigor were familiar territory.
But after retirement, learning shifted. I began taking short courses on platforms like Udemy, exploring topics that caught my attention — not because they were required, but because they were interesting.
Learning wasn’t new to me.
What was new was the freedom in how I engaged with it.
When physical range narrowed, mental range expanded. I found myself drawn more strongly toward figuring things out, asking better questions, building small projects, and staying mentally awake to the world.
Retired-eh! grew out of that realization.
Not as a reinvention.
Not as a productivity project.
But as a continuation.
This is a record of what it looks like to stay engaged with life when its shape changes — to keep learning, questioning, and growing, even when familiar structures fall away. I don’t have a blueprint or a set of answers. What I do have is curiosity, persistence, and a desire to remain fully present in the work of thinking and becoming.
That’s where this begins.