Now that 2023 is behind us (good riddance, I say!), it’s time to officially continue my quest to figure out what the heck I want to do with myself as a retired person. I spent so much of 2023 injured and recovering that I didn’t really have time for anything else. As 2024 begins, I’m headed in a positive direction health-wise but really need to work on the rest of me. The elbow injury futzed up my body big time but it also really futzed up my head. My anxiety went through the roof and I am still trying to wrestle that part of me into, if not submission, some sort of happy place where we can coexist. I have come to realize (this only took me 66 years to figure out) that I am an anxious person by nature and I am never going to “get better” but I can learn to cope with this part of me more effectively than I have for most of my life.

I attended a webinar recently that talked about reconnecting with your authentic self and it really resonated with me. One thing the presenter mentioned was the idea of “Is this it?” I am really pondering that one – working hard at figuring how I want to spend my time in this life as a person who doesn’t need to work. For the past several months my focus has been on wellness – fully recovering from my elbow injury and the impact the injury had on other parts (hello, neck and back!). But I need to start thinking beyond that. But maybe, maybe this IS it – the everyday-ness of getting up and living my life. Maybe I need to stop trying to figure things out and just LIVE. I can see the danger of overthinking could lead to me missing out on life as I spend way too much time overanalyzing what I think I should be doing. Okay, that was convoluted. Welcome to my brain.

So the quest continues for what I am going to do in retirement. But I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m already doing it. 🙂