Grugger’s Way

Retirement Danger ONE - Inactivity.  I can think of no habit easier to fall into than becoming inactive…like a volcano that sits quietly for years…eventually it erupts, often with severe consequences.  That is how I view my body: a couch potato one day…a heart attack patient the next.

Yes, sitting around doing nothing is habit-forming.  It is so easy to do once we are retired and no longer marching to somebody else’s drumbeat.  No schedules to keep!  No appointments or meetings or deadlines!  Wow.  The relief from job stress is so great–at least for me–that I just want to “veg out” as the kids would say.  And that would be a death sentence.

I know it.  My wife knows it. My adult kids know it.  I know it.  Yes-I know it twice.

How to combat it?  I start by getting up in the morning, every morning, and providing breakfast and medicine for the dogs.  I also make a lunch for my wife to take along with her to work.  I know she appreciates it, but I also know it would not be necessary; she “orders in” a lot of the time anyway, and often goes out to meet her son for lunch.  She allows me to make her a lunch each day because it gets me out of bed and gives me a schedule to keep, a deadline, some discipline that I would maybe not otherwise impose on myself.  This has worked well for us.  After she leaves for work I am wide awake, have had coffee, am reading the morning newspaper and eating breakfast.  Getting the dogs out for a walk helps me too. 

Anything—absolutely anything to get me moving is good for me.

I still sit down and read e-mails, compose some blog entries like this one, and correspond with folks I keep in touch with. My daily activity includes yoga, picking up dog doo from the back yard, perhaps push the lawn mower a couple times a week.  I am helping my son build a baby crib out of logs and that has taken a lot of hours (and energy), getting out into the woods and selecting dead timber, peeling off the bark, trimming and sanding and fitting.  All in all, I like to feel like I am an active retiree, physically, but in truth I know that it is nowhere near the activity level I need to maintain a healthy weight, cholesterol level, etc., etc..  So I know I have to do MORE, and I am working on MORE.  It is just so easy to take it easy…  

Trackback URI | Comments RSS