Is this the end? Or a new beginning....

It's a tiara!!!

So that’s it. I’ve  done it. After 39 years of teaching, I am officially retired. I know this to be true because my friends gave me a tiara with ‘Officially Retired’ on it!

At the moment I’m not exactly sure how I feel about it. I had a wonderful ‘send off’, some amazing gifts and many, many kind words both written and spoken about me. There was even a piece in the local paper.

Many of my cards and balloons (Yes, balloons!) said ‘Congratulations’ which struck me as odd. 

Congratulations, you’re too old to work

Congratulations, you've lived long enough to be too old to work

Congratulations, you’re a pensioner

Ugh. It’s the language I am struggling with. I thought I’d try to find an alternative, but if you look up ‘retired’ in the thesaurus, it gets worse: pensioners; OAPS; senior citizens; the elderly - the list goes on, but basically they all mean ‘old’!

People I know who are already retired, including my husband, insist that its marvellous, I will love it, and I will very soon wonder how I ever had time to work. Hopefully all those things will be true, but there’s no escaping the fact that, in the eyes of the world, I am old, even if 60 is the new 50, which in turn became the new 40! At this rate I’m heading for a second childhood!

As I’m writing this, I’m coming to realise that I actually have no choice in the matter - the only alternative to getting old is dying young, so, I choose to believe that my cards meant

Congratulations, you’ve escaped

Congratulations, you’re free

Congratulations, your life from now on will be one big adventure

So join me, as I journey into the Land of the Blue Rinse and attempt to redefine myself in terms other than my career and place of work. As I take on life’s new adventure…at this point I should probably mention that I am the world’s least adventurous person. Oh well, maybe I’ll prove that old dogs can learn new tricks!