I’m at this weird age where some friends, family members and acquaintances are still working, close to retirement or just decided to retire early (like myself) brought on earlier than planned due to various factors in their lives such as “post pandemic life rethink”, ageing parents or career transition.

I’ve got various groups of friends from different phases of my life over the years that I still keep in contact. My Navy friends, my corporate days, Rotary days….people I’ve picked up along the way in my travels, courses I’ve completed, volunteering days, you name it.

One of the things I’ve noticed though is that when we do get together for a catch up, sometimes I feel a bit awkward given that my conversation now focuses less on work matters on my part given that I’m not in that environment or situation anymore. Instead I talk about my leisure interests, courses I’ve signed up for, my French language culture and conversations, the books I’m reading, the ideas that have been inspiring me. At times, I feel like what I talk about may be considered frivolous to others who are still working.

After all, their days are all about attending back to back meetings, implementing enterprise systems, managing change program rollouts, designing and developing courses for their employees and so forth. These are exactly the same things that dominated my world when I was working and seemed so important and critical to my role, identity and life when I was working.

But now, for life after work, that all falls by the wayside.

It all seems irrelevant and pointless if I start to think about it.

When I think back to my working days, if I’m entirely honest with myself, it’s not the courses I built, the learning and development systems I worked on, the meetings I attended that I remember.

It’s the people and the experiences beyond the usual workplace workings that I recall.

For example, the overseas conferences where I met people who showed me their culture or showed me around their towns; the hilarious conversations in bars and restaurants with fellow colleagues or people I met along the way; the courses I’ve been on with weird and quacky instructors before the age of political correctness, the stories that the “old and bolds” colleagues used to tell of working in workplaces in the 70s; the pranks we used to play in the office on our colleagues, the conversations with the tea lady, the boss who accidentally got his tie stuck in the laminating machine and nearly choked himself…..

Anyway you get my drift.

Conversations now seem a little bit more serious when talking about work with others so instead, I listen and ask questions. Inside me I’m thinking that I do hope the other person is taking some time to themselves to do things they want to do in amongst the work. Even if it’s as little as taking 15 minutes to read their novel; enjoy a piano lesson or draw in their sketch book because the moment you stop work and retire, you’ve got so much time on your hands and you start to wonder what you’re going to do with it.

Yes, it’s a time for exploring interests and learning more about what you like to do with your time but I’d say, while even working, don’t deny yourself this because it may be easier to plan a retirement knowing that you have stacks of options ahead of you. Initially you’ll seem at a loss for what to do. Tasks around the house is usually what people do but then what?

When people talk to me about their working life now, yes, I listen and I nod but to me, it feels a tad empty. It seems that those “experiences” I mentioned above don’t happen often as people are working virtually, overstretched or budgets cut that no team bonding events happen anymore.

Working life seems a little bit more…serious and dare I say it, bland.

I’m more interested in what experiences they’re going through, what they’re doing outside of work, what they’re doing with family and friends because that’s when they truly light up; that’s where the interest is.

It’s not when talking about how busy they are with project managing the latest system implementation. Thankfully, at the end of the day, that’s not what is remarkable or remembered by anyone – least of all your employer so you may as well focus on things that light you up.

You’d have better livelier and memorable conversations with everyone that’s for sure because that’s what the world needs right now.