The Retirement Diaries — Part 1

What is retirement anyway? Instead of seeing it as the end of my working career, I’m viewing it as more of a beginning, a letting go of the daily grind and all the “should-dos”. Now it’s about inviting time for all the “could-dos” and “want-to-dos” that life has to offer. For me it’s the freedom to explore what truly brings me joy, without the constraints of work. And so far? I’m loving every fucking minute. And I’d love for you to join me on our wild ride as I navigate this uncharted territory! From delightful surprises to head-scratching moments, and all the unexpected twists in between, I’m ready to share the highs and lows of our retirement adventure in this ongoing diary series. So, let’s dive in together!

DAY 1–28th July 2024
Wooohoooooo!!!!! We’re retired, bitches!!!! Haha, did you expect me to react any other way?! So, how do I feel? I don’t really know; normal and weird at the same time. To be honest, our dates are a bit mixed up. Today is the first official day of retirement. But my last shift was five days ago. LOL, who actually gives a shit!!? We celebrated with a deliciously juicy winner-winner, roast chicken-dinner that David cooked in the air-fryer, and a bottle of champagne to mark the end of our careers and the beginning of the rest of our lives. I am so ludicrously happy right now.

DAY 9–5th August 2024
I can’t believe it’s already been nine days. I don’t miss work at all. I’ve broken free from the golden handcuffs, and with every minute that passes I feel lighter and freer. Not surprisingly, the one thing I do miss about work is the big fat monthly salary that came with those gilded shackles, especially as I haven’t been paid for almost two months. David and I realised that we really messed up by quitting our jobs before selling our apartment. Such a rookie mistake! So here we are, with no income, and a mortgaged apartment that’s been gathering cobwebs on the market for the last three months. It’s really strange and quite wonderful though, that I’m feeling so effortlessly positive and not at all stressed about our situation. I have faith that everything is going to work out. Everything is going to be fine.

DAY 12 (8th August 2024) — DAY 51 (16th September 2024)
We are settling into a really nice new rhythm, the days are all blending together and starting to feel the same and to be honest I’m not at all mad about it, and even though I’m desperate to leave Dubai, part of me kind of doesn’t want this to end, it feels so comfortable and secure and familiar, and maybe I’m just craving the structure and order that work used to give me and that’s OK because this is a judgement-free zone, so we wake up early every morning and do yoga or go to the gym, then we go for a walk or sit on our balcony reading, meditating or catching up on social media, it’s stupidly hot right now so we’re usually drenched in sweat by the end of it, but it’s nice to just get out of the air-conditioned apartment, and after lunch we usually have a quick coffee nap which I’m worried that I’m becoming dependent upon and I’d really rather not have one every single day but at the moment I feel like it’s OK to give myself permission to have a daily nap because years of shift work have left my hormones in a medically disrupted disaster zone and my energy levels are at ground zero so I’m not going to beat myself up about it, we’ve started a new afternoon ritual of putting our phones down and reading for half an hour a day which is great because I have a scorching case of tsundoku, the Japanese affliction also known as buying hundreds of books and letting them pile up without ever reading them and until now I just never had the luxurious cognitive expanse of unlimited time to enjoy them, so this small window of reading every day feels like such a gift to me, another fun thing we’ve started doing is watching all the movies, all the films we’ve been meaning to catch up on for years, sure we watched movies occasionally when we were working but not very often because digesting a two hour film on our days off between work cycles always felt like an uncomfortable waste of time for me, but now we have all the time in the world and I’m loving diving into all sorts of weird and wonderful things (Yorgos Lanthimos back-catalogue, anyone?), and I love that I suddenly have brain space for this stuff and OK we might not watch five hours of movies every day for the rest of our lives but I’m choosing to go with the flow in these first few months, I’m happy to just sit back and see where the tide takes us, I hit my elbow really badly in the bedroom today and David rushed in from the living room to check on me and I feel so lucky to be with someone who cares so deeply for me and is so genuinely engaged in my well-being, we still haven’t had any offers on the house and it feels so, so stupid to be stuck here in a city that we desperately want to escape from, during summer which is the worst time of the year and not earning any money, our real estate agent reckons it’s just a crappy time of year to sell, so thanks Andres you could have told us that when we signed a seven month exclusive contract with you, but you know what it’s actually fine, I know that our apartment is fucking spectacular and I know that the right person is going to come along and recognise that and want to throw fucking spectacular amounts of money at us in exchange for it, we just have to be patient, we just have to wait, we finally signed up for our own private health insurance after 18 scary days without any coverage at all but for some reason Allianz is giving me grief and excluding any future claims related to my boobs, including breast cancer despite having no family history of it, despite there being absolutely no reason for it and this exclusion even extends to preventative (and potentially life-saving) mammograms and ultrasounds, what the fuck, but unfortunately due to a lack of options and the urgency of securing coverage we signed up to their policy but I’m determined to find a better insurer next year, ugh insurance companies suck, I’m trying to use my phone less as I’ve noticed a marked increase in the amount of time I’m spending on it and I don’t like that at all, so I popped my phone in a drawer and tried to forget about it which made it a lot easier to not keep checking it, and it made my day way more productive and it also made a discernable difference to how much time I spent talking to David, it seems like my dependence on it is visual so if I can’t see the damn thing it’s easier for me to control the urge to pick it up so putting it away feels like a good idea, I had a bath today and it was nice but it does feel like a big waste of water so it was probably my last bath in our beautiful big tub and I imagine the days ahead will be filled with “lasts” and “finals” and I’d like to remain aware enough of them that I can feel gratitude for it all rather than feel sadness, and every day is the same and we never leave the house but today we left the house so I could have an eye-wateringly expensive mammogram and breast ultrasound and I’m grateful that I can afford to pay for it even though I shouldn’t have to for fuck’s sake, we watched The Matrix again for the first time in more than twenty years and absolutely loved it, it’s aged so well and I’m really happy to have popped the red pill, free Palestine and fuck israel, a guy came to view the apartment today and really liked it and complimented us on it, and every person that’s been through to have a look has had something really nice to say about it which feels wonderful but it sure would be fantastic if someone just made an actual fucking offer.

DAY 52–17th September 2024
Yet another couple toured our place today and raved about how beautiful it is. Flattering, sure — but honestly, can someone please just make a goddamn offer already? I’m feeling frustrated and impatient.

DAY 53–18th September 2024
The couple that looked at the apartment yesterday really did love it, and actually did make a reasonable offer!!! It’s not quite what we think it’s worth, but we really want to get out of Dubai so I’m pretty tempted to just take the money and run. It’s hard to know what to do, so we told our agent we’d sleep on it.

DAY 54–19th September 2024
OMG, I’m so glad we didn’t accept that lowball offer yesterday because this morning we received a new offer from a different buyer that matches our bold ambitions!! And also sets a record price for this type of apartment. It feels phenomenal to know that we weren’t over-valuing it, and that it really is worth what we wanted. Woot!!

DAY 67–2nd October 2024
We are dealing with the banks — so please kill me now. Red tape is Dubai’s middle name and it’s particularly painful having to catch a taxi from one bank branch to another, only to be told that you actually should have done something at the other branch and then have to catch a taxi back again two more times. It sometimes feels like the fuckers are doing it on purpose, just to mess with us. As a result, David and I got very shitty with each other today as we went about doing our banking chores, but what I love is that we were still able to have lots of shared laughs in between the snarkiness. We’ve done so much work on our relationship over the years that I feel confident we’re stepping into this new phase more connected than ever. It’s like the best is still ahead, rich with everything we’ve built as a team. I’m so excited!

DAY 79–14th October 2024
I got a big hug from my wonderful dentist today. I’m going to miss her!!

DAY 80–15th October 2024
I am sitting in our apartment surrounded by 66 towering boxes of stuff and wondering where on earth we are going to put everything in our tiny Amsterdam pad. LOL!! We are ludicrous people!

DAY 81–16th October 2024
Our house is almost completely empty. We’ve gifted some of the larger pieces of furniture to the new owners, so the couch, fridge and TV are all still here, but our personal belongings are gone. It no longer feels like our place, but still, I didn’t want to leave last night; something was holding me here. So, despite having rented an Airbnb just a five-minute walk away, we decided to sleep over. We ordered takeaway, opened a bottle of wine that was still in the fridge, and watched some fun TV. And then we curled up on the couch and went to sleep. It was so lovely to wake up in our own place for the last time and sit on the balcony to watch the sun rise this morning. I have closure now.

DAY 90–25th October 2024
Our apartment has officially been sold, and thanks to Zimmy who acted as our power of attorney the cheque has safely been deposited at the bank. It’s crazy that when we bought the place in 2016 we also had to give power of attorney to a friend. Both times because of the excruciatingly slow cogs of bureaucracy that define Dubai’s property market, turning a simple signature into a test of patience and endurance. But it’s done now, and as soon as that cheque clears David and I are financially independent, yo! We celebrated with a fist-bump. It was a very good feeling.

DAY 92–27th October 2024
We arrived on our Greek island home of Kefalonia today. It’s absolutely thrilling to be here in our cute little cottage with a distant view of the expansive Ionian Sea. I have a feeling my brain still thinks this is all just one big, fabulous holiday and that we’ll be returning to Dubai in a couple of weeks. Haha, have I got a surprise for you, brain!!! We are going to be living out of suitcases for the next 4–5 months so we have a LOT of luggage with us, 77kgs to be precise! Chaos reigns, but I feel like this might be the place where I can finally let out a deep, long breath and set sail towards a new horizon.