How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free

A friend told me he was reading Ernie Zelinski's book, How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free. Since I'm getting ready to retire in about 3 months, I decided to check it out myself (which I did...from my local library!).

I'm working my way through it now.  It's rather ironic that some of what Zelinski talks about in the book are things that I too have thought about a lot as I inch forward towards retirement.  The section that I just read talked about three needs that most jobs tend to fill:

Purpose

Community

Structure

Purpose is one of my biggest concerns.  I like to feel needed and that I'm contributing to something. Although I do volunteer with several different organizations, my job plays a huge part in that function.  Soon that will be gone.  Thankfully I do have the volunteer work that I do, and I'm going to use retiring as a spring board to spend more time devoted to those efforts.  Moving to Asheville in October will present somewhat of a challenge, because I will no longer be able to volunteer with 2 of the 3 organizations I currently give time to, because they are local, and I no longer will be.  But I have already identified a handful of organizations in Asheville that will hopefully be able to fill that gap.

Zelinski sprinkles quotes throughout his book, and several of them have resonated with me. 

I definitely want to be one of the people who makes things happen!