On Being Retired

Retirement... It Can be a Challenge

I retired at 62 which is early. Official full retirement age is 65. I retired because I was working a mediocre job and wasn't kept busy enough. Since I lived with my son and his family (paying rent, of course), I felt I could afford to simply stop working. I had really been looking forward to not working anymore for several years. Forty-four years of working is plenty.

The first few years were easy peasy. I painted art pieces, made jewelry, crocheted a crap ton of Afghans for family and outfits for my new grandson, and enjoyed unlimited television.

Then the day came when I could no longer live with my son and his family. It wasn't working out as we all had hoped. I'm now living in a room in a trailer owned by a 79-year-old woman. I've no place to paint canvases or watercolor paper and I'm bored with jewelry making. Overall, I was just bored. BORED!

I thought about looking for a job, but not for long. There was no way I was going to find an Art Director job. I'd been away from it for too long. Besides, I live in an art drenched city with a killer art college just up the road. The kids coming out of that place are very talented and - frankly - I'm not up for competition. I'm 67 and done with that crap.

Ugh! A job. I didn't wanna. I didn't want to work some menial, lifeless, boring job. What to do?

I remembered I had started a Zazzle store, Visages Gift Store, back in 2011. It got to the point where I was receiving checks every other month and sometimes a couple of months in a row. Because I had neglected it for so long, there were 200 and some odd pages of product that needed attention. It took some time, but I got everything back up and available for people to see then hopefully buy.

Then I headed to my blogs, Zazzling Gifts, Dreams Come True, and Miller's Wrapped Expression. I hadn't blogged in a while, so I was a bit rusty. Still, here I am blogging away. 

Next was creating a website. I had used GoDaddy in the past so I stuck with it. As frustratingly slow as it was (and still is), I managed to get a semblance of a site up I named Visages Gift Store which is - coincidently - the name of my Zazzle store.

And I wrote a children's book, The Little Bear and the Lollipop Tree, that I'm marketing. With no revenue yet coming in from the updated Visages Gift Store, I'm having to find creative and free ways to market. Research is very time consuming. Yet, there are ways to market through social media, blogging and having a website.

Funny thing. I'm not bored anymore. I'm busier than I have been in years. I'm productive which is a must-do for retired folks. Several of my friends have bought my book, my blog stats have increased substantially, and Visages Gift Store is selling again. In two or three months, I'll have my first check from them. In another few months, I'll get a check from Amazon from my book sales.

Dreams come true, but - dang - is it ever a lot of work!