I worked for 5 years teaching English and enjoyed every second of it. I got married in Japan and my wife wanted to learn English, so we moved to the UK. At that point, I got a programming job again. However, in my mind, I'm still retired.
You have to do something with your life. I suppose some people dream of the ability to lie on a beach every day and get drunk, or whatever. I've never been that way. I want interesting challenges. My "job" furnishes me with those.
I don't really treat my "career" seriously any more. I like programming. I program. People give me money. I'm happy. I don't show up for my 9-6 (or 8am-12pm as I used to do when I was young) and push bits for money. I just write code for fun because I'm retired. My "employers" give me money because they like my code.
I think the only thing that gets me down is interacting with people in difficult situations. If your personalities don't mesh, or if the person is going through one of those times as a programmer where they are as annoying as hell (and everyone has times like that)... But that's life, isn't it. Even when you are retired, it's not like all the ass-hats of the world will suddenly disappear.
So if you feel like it, I highly recommend retiring as well. What do you want to do in your retirement? I want to write code.
"He worked all his life, and for what? He didn't even get to enjoy what he worked for. Fuck that." Dad shuts down business to live a simpler lifestyle
So true!
A lot of people don't have enough to fill their lives with after they get done working. God help you if you don't have family, friends, interests, or some higher purpose to sustain you outside of work. For all the talk of work-life balance, I worry about this - work seems to be expanding to take up an even bigger chunk of our lives all the time.
Oh well, with my family history, I won't have to worry about living to retirement age, and without some major changes to demographics or policy, Social Security won't either.