Dear LPG, 

Can any other reader remember experiencing this problem?

I recently retired after a lifetime of working various jobs that involved shift work. It was a quite solitary life, and many of my colleagues, like me, found themselves working those hours either after their families had left home or because they lived alone. As you get older, jobs often seem to become harder to find, and this is how I ended up choosing jobs with challenging shift patterns. I would usually wake up early and leave home in the morning for a day’s work, enjoying the perk of finishing early in the afternoon, or I would start work in the middle of the day or quite late in the evening, meaning I would return home in the early hours. Let me tell you that, although I enjoyed the work and the friends I worked with, we often shared similar experiences regarding the hours we worked.

We often discussed being the family member who always missed the usual gatherings and parties. Our work schedules typically meant we arrived late because we couldn't find someone to swap shifts with, or we needed some sleep, or time to get ready for an event that couldn't be scheduled differently.

Occasionally, someone would retire, and we would all discuss one change we planned to make on the big day. Until it was my turn, I would let the sentiment wash over me, but I found myself telling my colleagues that I couldn't wait for the day when I wouldn't need to wake up to an alarm clock because of work. I resolved never to use one again and to do exactly what I wanted when I wanted.

Well, the big day arrived around two years ago, and it didn't take long for me to realise that retirement comes with some excellent perks and a few downsides, just like everything in life. However, I live alone, and the best thing about it for me was the freedom to do exactly what I wanted, when I wanted, regardless of the circumstances. 

For a while there I thought it was terrific to be able to get up and go to sleep whenever the mood took me, do the shopping when I felt like it, eat my meals when I felt hungry or I fancied something that was usually too sweet and not that good for me, and spend days on end watching far too much television.  But somewhere along the line, I got bored with all that.  I used to talk to friends on the phone a lot, and it got to the point where I envied the fact that so many of my calls ended when the friend I was chatting with told me they had to go because it was time for them to do something else.  

I soon realised that living the lazy life I had always promised myself was not the way forward for a newly retired person, and I was happy to have found a social club to attend, which met on two days of the week.  I now help to run one of them, and life is just as busy as it was when I was working (although I have factored in a lot of downtime and I have made sure that I get to choose my own ‘working’ hours).

The concerning thing is that things had to become bad before I realised I wasn't doing myself any favours with the lifestyle I had chosen. Things truly reached a crisis when I realised I was losing track of time. I’m not talking about the time of day so much, but do you ever find yourself overthinking before you can figure out what day of the week it is or what the actual date is?   

I now use that as a guideline. Suppose I don’t even know what day of the week it is; I must be getting a bit lazy again.  There is no doubt about it, we all need a daily routine… 

EN, Lewisham.

EN found us some internet info to corroborate her theory…

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