What have you discovered about yourself since retiring?

Sunny said:
I've discovered that even though your job seems all-important while you are still working, it is really pretty unimportant in the scheme of things, looking at your life as a whole.
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This quote really does explain how I feel now that I just retired. I wish I had this quote years ago. It would have been a stress reliever. So much truth.
 
When I first retired I thought to myself, I have all this free time to enjoy all my projects and hobbies. I love being home but somewhere along the line I started adding more and more things that I wanted to get done in a day. I actually stress myself out about not getting it all done. I look back and think how I accomplished so much around the house and still worked. I still love retirement. I just need to stop making lists I can't possibly accomplish in a day and stop to smell the roses.
 
Ruth n Jersey said:
When I first retired I thought to myself, I have all this free time to enjoy all my projects and hobbies. I love being home but somewhere along the line I started adding more and more things that I wanted to get done in a day. I actually stress myself out about not getting it all done. I look back and think how I accomplished so much around the house and still worked. I still love retirement. I just need to stop making lists I can't possibly accomplish in a day and stop to smell the roses.
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Ruth, I can totally relate to that. My thoughts are that I will do all my enjoyable things after I'm productive and get everything else done. Fat chance. Anyway, that's what I'm trying to change in the new year.
 
I flew as a pilot for almost 34 years. Every day that I went to work, I could hardly believe that I got paid as much as I did for something that I enjoyed so much. I never thought of my job as work.

Sure, there were times when I would be tired and even exhausted, but my energy level for doing my job never waned. At one time, we (pilots) could be on duty for up to a 12 hour day. In 2009, all that changed. Due to some planes going down and the cause being listed as “pilot fatigue”, the rules were changed to limit the number of hours a pilot could fly.

Nonetheless, I miss my job very much, but being away from it the last few years, I would not trust myself to go back to work. I am sure that I could not just step right back in and pick up from where I left off.
 
I found out that I’m pretty darned good at composing and producing music after purchasing a digital piano first in 1998, the year I retired, then upgrading that. I released a CD of instrumental, multi-genre music in 2003 which is available on streaming sites. I discovered the computer, the internet and got heavy into social networking, ironic since before my husband brought the computer home, I had no interest in using one. I found out that I'm not an only child...met my half siblings the year I retired and became very close to 2 out of the 3. An older sister, whom I'm told looked like my twin had passed away a few years before.

After retirement it became of premiere importance to take vacations at ocean front locations, which I facilitated by buying an oceanfront timeshare fairly easy traveling distance from home and joining it’s affiliate exchange club, both of which offer bone cheap vacation options. Lastly, I did a 180 when I became an early morning person. When I was working, it was hard for me to get up and be at work by 8:30. Now I’m up sometimes 4:30 or 5:00.
 
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After bluffing my way through 35 years at the same location, I now realize I'm not near as smart as I thought I was. Also I don't have to come up with answers, I can honestly say, 'I don't know'. People are learning, they've quit asking.
 
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