Does anybody really miss working?

Nope, don't miss work.  I do miss the team that I worked with but many of us still get together for drinks and dinner on an infrequent basis.  I'm actually feeling busier than when I worked, although that's not true, but this is fun.  Full-time occupation is being with my wife, kids and grandkids.  Much better than work.  Also, lots of hobbies (trains, photography, computers/tech, cars, fishing).  Jeez, I've got it made.  Need to be thankful for this abundance.

Was retired for a few years after my wife and I got married in 08.  Some health issues we didn't have coverage for hit us pretty hard 2 1/2 years ago forcing a move and I needed to go back to work. Did sales most of my life and with her urging decided to try real estate - wish I had gone into this 20 years ago!

At 70 I hope to work perhaps another 5 years and get stabilized enough to retire or at least cut back some...

Am still trying to find 'that' house with a great basement! More difficult than I thought it would be.

Only when I sleep in!

I still have another 10-15 years depending on my situation. I am bit younger 50. I have a friend in the area who retired 6 years ago or so, but he has always sold and bought trains and he continues to do so, thru train shows. It keeps him busy and he makes a "few bucks" but the important thing is that he loves what he does now its part time and its all good.

David's question couldn't make me help but think of what I think is one of the best  dialogues in contemporary movie history:

Bob Porter (corporate downsizing consultant): Looks like you've been missing a lot of work lately.

Peter Gibbons (rebellious employee): Well, I wouldn't exactly say I've been missing it, Bob.

- Office Space

I can't wait until I retire...so tired of working..even though I kind of enjoy it.

Why can't I just get paid to play video games, work on my layout, and be a male fashion model?

Miss working?  Not after retiring, when every day is SATURDAY!

I took to retirement like a duck takes to water from the 1st minute. I was a machinist, a tax provider during the heyday of the aerospace industry in southern Calif. and my job was fulfilling frequently.

Retired 12 1/2 years ago and have never looked back, or missed work.  My wife and I retired at the same time, and decided to make a clean break, and move from the area we had lived and worked in, for the previous 30 years.  Best move ever: forced to make new friends, find new activities, and new hobbies, although the trains did come with us. Kind of a post-retirement kick-start.  We do go back there for a month every year, to visit old friends and haunts, but we do not visit where we worked.  

No

Doug

The worst day retired beats the best day working.

I still manage apartments but I have been retired from full-time work and the long commutes for 10 years.

Yet I still do not have enough time to do everything I want to do.

I am an engineer and I really "working."  The engineering I do isn't really work for me.  It is play time that I get well paid for.  Things I have done over the last many years include flight simulators, high performance servomechanisms, analysis and design of precision, gyro stabilized gimbals for night vision sensors for the military, analysis and simulation of dynamic systems, designing and building electric motion bases for flight simulators and entertainment rides and for testing stabilized antennas.  This beats working for a living.  

Correction:  I am an engineer and I really like "working." 

Every morning while enjoying my coffee, I read the paper.  After the news and sports I turn to the comics.  There's only one comic I read.  I find it both overpoweringly funny and at the same time sad because it so wickedly captures the insanity of the business world.  It's called  "Dilbert."  If I were to ever have warm feelings of nostalgia for those days spent sitting in a cubicle or office, this strip unfailingly kills them.  None more effectively than this one.

- Mike

I retired at the end of March, 2014 after working in the same industry for 49 years.  I do not miss working and I especially don't miss the commute.

I do miss the people but I speak with at least one of them every week.

I am still adjusting to being able to do what I want, when I want.

I have been retired for 15 yeas and I must miss it because I often dream that I am working. miss some of the people, the challenges and getting things done but don't miss the travel(car) or the stupid people in your company that just don't get it.  Biggest problems were people in your own company, too often bosses who didn't have a clue, and your suppliers/ manufacturers that were hopeless.

I retired from the masonry profession in 2000 because of severe carpal tunnel, but at but at only 44 I couldn't stop working. I took a job at the local school district in the maintenance department, taking care of 5 schools. I really do miss the construction field, but the earlier days when the work I did was more art work then block laying drudgery later on. Now I am looking forward to full retirement in 4 years. Hopefully, one or both of my remaining sons will have moved out, leaving me a room for a permanent layout. Congratulations to all who have moved on to the next phase of life, and may all your retirement years be fulfilling.

Don

Nope.......but do miss the people I worked side by side with for 30 years.

-Pete

No, don't miss it at all.

I cannot believe people actually miss work, and some that spend their retirement

rocking on the porch.  I miss only the income, and the business travel, which sent me,

at no expense, around the country and across the pond.  I LOVE to travel and the trains and railroad history are a reason for it, as if I needed a reason, where photography would do.

I never had enough time for my hobbies working, and now, I still don't have enough

time for some of them.  I do not have time to work. Due to an ailing parent, I did

work several years longer than planned.

No. I was a mechanic for 35 years. The last 16 years i worked i rebuilt transmissions. In 2006 i started having back trouble. In 2007 i was fired because i could no longer work fast enough to suit my former employer. I ended up on disabilty because of my back. Last weekend my back went out again and i ended up at the VA hospital in Indy. Glad i spent 2 years in the Army. Looking back i should have stayed in the Army. I sure wouldn't be in the shape i am in now.

Yes and no. I had a great job, interesting, challenging, with lots of international travel,  constant change and intellectual stimulation. I lived overseas, learned foreign languages, and had adventures stranger than fiction.The people I knew were as diverse as you can imagine - diplomats, spies, soldiers, mercenaries, politicians, academics, heroes, villains, of every race and religion. Unfortunately it was also super high stress and I burned out on it and took early retirement at 50. I look back at it with great nostalgia, but I know I couldn't go back to it. It left me with a decent retirement income and enough of my physical and mental health to enjoy life, mostly. I do have a part-time job teaching foreign affairs at the local community college, which allows me to keep up with what's happening and make good use of my experience. 

I cannot recall any post which has generated so many responses in such a brief period.

I will be retiring in less then six months, uncle sam says so or not! And I can tell you I will love it, just thinking about it give me great joy..

NOUS SOMMES TOUS CHARLIE-HEBDO!

NO!  I worked  in the oil and gas world.  The last year I worked one of my performance goals was to only work 12 hour days 5 days a week.  I worked a few Saturdays and one 18 hour day and one 23 hour day that last year I worked.  The last long day was to stay up all night watching the well pressure on a problem gas well (7,500 PSI on well and maximum pressure the equipment was designed for was 8,200 PSI) so other employees could get a good nights sleep a the well site.

No, not at all.

I really thought and worried about missing it. Thought I'd miss the travel and the fact that I never knew what was coming next. One morning I came to work and by eleven was on a plane to Paris. Had to call my wife at the airport that I wouldn't be home for dinner. This happened a lot. Most of my passports had extension pages because they were filled up. You can't get tired of it but there comes a time when you know it's the time to stop. 36 years of seeing the best and worst of people. 

I guess that's why we haven't been off this island for over three years. Love it here. Oh, tomorrow we are taking a 35 minute flight to Oahu on the shopping and party trip for three days. Big adventure. Don

You HAVE to be kidding. !'m 72. Eighteen years ago while at work I realized that work was not fun anymore. Packed up my things and left. NEVER looked back. Besides who really has time to work.

Denny

I retired on 9-17-2014 as a mechanical engineer after a forty year career, over this time period many changes occurred in the job market, when I started there were many employment opportunities, both level entry and experienced, for one to chose from.

Although I did a large number of drawings on linen(graphite lead) and mylar(plastic lead) mediums and checked/approved many drawings, by the time the CAD programs came out I was a project manager and off the board. I also did many design calculations(stress analysis),checked/approved these calculations performed by other people and used finite element codes in structural and dynamic analysis of complex structures, wrote engineering rework/modification procedures and spent many weeks with shop personnel in the application of these procedures.

Throughout may career I always readied myself to help fellow employees( white collar and blue collar) in the engineering office or on the shop floor and was quite vocal in my conversations with upper management stressing the importance of skilled engineering staff, skilled shop work force and purchasing department and the importance of respect and cooperation between these three groups, had no tolerance for egos(empire building), smoozing, laziness or incompetence. 

I can honestly state that I miss the working relationship that I had with many fellow engineers and shop personnel but I do not miss some of the leadership decisions, edicts or logic for directives from upper management keeping this in mind I am glad that I am retired.

Seems to me that there must be about 2500 different types of volunteer work out there for a guy who is bored in retirement. So many people in need.

Jeff C

Yes and no. Let me explain . From 97 thru 2009 I was either in the field, deployed, on call 24/7 or 20 hr work days in garrison. Bottom line I was lucky at times to see my kids and my wife. In 2009 my branch decided that 16 years in Germany was enough and it was time to PCS back to the states. My command pulled sstrings and got me to Tampa so I could get a break and get fixed. First year was great. I got to be a dad and really be involved in my kids activities. Old habits die hard and after a year I was ready to start deploying again. I was finding it real hard to be on the sidlines. Thats when the medical issue started comming out.Two of which were bad enough to permanently remove me from jump status and make me nondeployable. What was worse where I was assigned, it was full of FOB rats and peaple who were avoiding going into the box, or tell peaple they need to deploy as long it was not them. Time to get fixed and retire. Fast forward to now. Now I am a soccor dad and I do love it, but. This too is alot of work. How my wife delt with all this while I was off playing Army I cant tell you. So now I am taking care of three kids(one who is autistic ) and my wife is sick and requires alot of care for a long time. As much as I am needed at home, I still find it hard to be on the sidelines. My wife knows I would be more than happy to put my uniform back on and go after the bad guys. I guess the only ones who would understand this would be the ex military forum members.

Do I miss work? Do I miss the 1 to 2+hour drive both ways on Route 128 (a DEATH HIGHWAY TO H___? Do I miss the Ex-wife? NO.

Do I miss the time I wasted "working for a living"? YES.

I am finely doing what man was meant to do.

Paul Goodness

Being out of work is an ok thing provided you are financially secure and that you have plenty of activities to keep you busy.

Bob C.

Are you James Bond?  

NO! I retired on 10/31/2011 after forty one and a half years in sales with Nabisco/Kraft. I don't miss it at all, though the job was ok. I am never bored, I play in three senior softball leagues from April to November, and now I am building a new layout in my new location after moving from a nice lagoon front home that was trashed by Sandy.

    Now I just hope that I can keep healthy so that I can play ball,boat/fish, play trains, hang out with friends. The thing is that you have to have interests to enjoy retirement.

Rich

I don't ever plan on stopping. I am in my 46th year. As long as I am healthy I will work. Do I like my vacation time off . YES.  I just don't want to ever live on less.

Age 66 next month, first SS check should be coming. Relatively good health, lots of things to do.  

Relatively young in my community, a bitter cold snow day yesterday, I find myself shoveling for my 80 year old neighbors to the left and a cancer patient to the right.  I could expand the effort, easily, up and down the street.  The post war,  baby boomer, group may be one of the largest demographics in our population, all retiring at one time.  IMO.   

"Meine Name heisst Borg - Christian Borg." (Signature line from "Jolly Joker," a German TV spy parody.) 

I was not in intelligence, but I came in contact with some of the players. Something similar to the events of "The Spy Who Loved Me" (the original short story, not the movie) actually happened to me in an obscure corner of the world. The roles were reversed, and the woman is still a friend. She called me from Europe the other day. 

Yes and No.