The list has been building for years: an overgrown garden, guttering that's needed replacing for a while, rooms I keep meaning to redecorate and never get to. I've given myself a few weeks after 26 June to decompress, and the obvious move is to spend them clearing that backlog. I think that would be a quiet mistake.
June 2026 : 4 min read - Part of the My Personal Journey to Early Retirement series at FreeBefore65.
It isn't that the jobs don't need doing. They do. The danger is that chores expand to fill whatever time you give them, and a man who spends his first month of freedom up a ladder fixing guttering hasn't retired. He's just changed employers. The house becomes the new boss, there's always another job, and the list never reaches zero. If I'm not careful the decompression weeks turn into a different kind of work, with the same early starts and the same sense of a task list owning the day.
So the harder question isn't what needs doing. It's what I'll actually enjoy. And I've found that one surprisingly difficult to answer.
The appetite problem
I started learning the guitar about ten years ago. I'm OK but don't practise as often as I should. For a while I practised most evenings, then work got heavier and the commute got longer, and the guitar started living in its case more than out of it. Photography went the same way. I used to genuinely love it, and somewhere in the last few years it lapsed into something I used to do.
The pattern I don't like is this. Over the past few years I bought tickets to see various bands. I didn't go to any of them. Each time, when the night came round, I was too tired, or too far from home, or I simply couldn't face the drive back and the early start after. Bands I'd wanted to see for years, and I let the tickets go to waste because work had hollowed out the part of me that wanted things.
That's the real fear under all of this. Not that I won't have time. I'll have nothing but time. It's that work has trained me out of the appetite, and that come July I'll have the freedom to play the guitar and walk and pick the camera back up, and simply won't feel the pull.
Why the usual advice doesn't fit
Most of the "things to do in retirement" articles are written for someone in their late sixties who's winding down, full of cruises and gentle pursuits. Sensible enough for that stage. It isn't my stage. The few that do aim younger are the same recycled hobby lists, the sort the internet now generates by the thousand - generic activities or overly simplistic "mindful hobbies" or tedious "how to fill your time" posts.
I'm 58, hopefully with energy and a couple of decades in front of me, and the question isn't how to wind down gracefully. It's how to start something while I've still got the legs for it. Almost nobody writes for that.
Getting out from under her feet
There's a practical side to all this too. My wife is self-employed and works from home. I'm about to be in that same home, all day, every day. Anyone who's been through it will tell you the early weeks of one partner retiring while the other still works can be a delicate business. She has calls to take and deadlines to hit, and I'll be the bloke wandering through asking if she fancies a cup of tea while she's mid-call.
So part of this is straightforwardly about having somewhere to be that isn't the living room. The local countryside is right there. East Yorkshire isn't dramatic, but it's quiet and green and good for walking, and it's the obvious place to take the camera and rebuild the habit. A morning out with the camera gets me moving, gives the photography a reason, and keeps me from hovering while she's trying to earn a living.
Where I've landed, for now
I'm not going to pretend I've got a plan. What I've got is a short list and a worry. The list is the guitar, the camera and the footpaths within driving distance. The worry is whether I'll actually want any of it once the novelty of not setting an alarm wears off.
The compromise I've made with myself is that the household jobs get a cap. A couple of the urgent ones in the first month, the guttering included, and then they go back in the queue. The decompression weeks are for finding out whether the appetite comes back, not for redecorating. If by August the guitar's still in its case, that tells me something I'd rather know early.
I'll report back.
Further reading:
- The Two-Phase Problem: Why Planning Retirement Isn't the Same as Living It
- "What Are You Going to Do When You Retire?" - The Uncomfortable Honest Answer
- I Still Can't Quite Say the Word - My Complicated Relationship With "Retirement"
Part of the My Personal Journey to Early Retirement series at FreeBefore65.
Tony writes about his personal journey to early retirement at freebefore65.co.uk. He is not a financial adviser. All content reflects his own experience and research and should be taken as a starting point for your own thinking, not as professional advice.
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