I started this series early in my blog, when I cut my hours and wanted to make sure I used my time wisely.
I started this series of posts at the end of October 2018 with lots of big goals, but even at the beginning, knew that I couldn’t follow all those dreams all at once.
I’m now trying to prepare for retirement in earnest. I’ve cut my hours more, and finding purpose when I stop working seems more pressing.
Periodically, I try to look at what I have accomplished, and see if I can focus my free time in the directions I wish I would go: increasing fitness, building (or maintaining) connections with friends, family and community, engaging with the arts, and, lately, keeping up with financial tasks.
My last update was in December 2025, and I meant to reflect on my progress earlier in the year. I guess I’ve been busy (lots of travel! lots of other obligations!), but it’s time to stop and pay attention to what I’m doing with my life when I’m home.
Exercise
Getting to retirement in bad physical shape doesn’t sound like a great time. I have hopes that once I am in retirement, I can become fitter, but I realize I can’t wait that long to take care of my body. So one of my goals–the one I have probably focused most on–is to get more exercise while I am still working.
I try to get 150 minutes a week of some exercise (see: CDC recommendations) with at least 30 minutes of strength building; when I work in the hospital, I just can’t get that much. Instead, I lower my goal to 90 minutes of exercise, since that’s a realistic stretch.
How did I do?
I reached my goals in 30/42 weeks. That feels terrible, but comes out to a 71% success rate. Several weeks were missed because of illness (COVID, ugh), and a few weeks were very close. I’d love to do better, but this isn’t terrible.
My number goals really aren’t going to change for now. I’d love to do more, but I still find it a challenge to get to 150 minutes when I am working. Based on recent weeks, I will be incorporating more stretching, and struggling to figure out aerobic activity, during the winter months.
Connections
More and more is being written about the importance of connections: with family, with friends, with people in the community. If I’m not careful, I can totally let work take over my life. Since I don’t actually want to be a hermit, I really need to work on spending time with people other than Mr. PiN.
My goals have been to keep up with my weekly social video calls, and socialize in-person at least 2 times a month. I had also wanted to attend services more regularly, at least once a month.
How did I do?
Over 10 months:
I saw a lot of family. My brother came to visit; my sister in law came to visit; Mr. PiN and I traveled to visit his uncle and significant other; we made another trip to visit Mr. PiN’s cousin and my sister and her family; I went home where I saw my mom, my aunt, a cousin, and one of my nephews; and lastly Mr. PiN and I went on a vacation with his sister. Written out like that, we saw a lot of family.
The friends I see by video each week made time to visit in-person. My Saturday group met once, and my Sunday group three times.
Mr. PiN and I hosted friends for dinner twice, and we went out with friends, 3 times.
I spent a lot of time with my retired friend, 9 visits counted.
Overall, that averages out to 2.5 social events per month, and that is counting each family visit just once (most lasted more than 1 day).
Also! I attended services 3 times, by video. This is definitely not meeting my goal of once per month, but is still better than my average when I starting this goal (I really as starting from zero).
I’m pretty happy with my goals of one in-person social event twice a month (maybe with the hopes of increasing this in the future) and trying to get to services once a month (meeting that goal would be amazing). I would also like to get my holiday cards out before New Year’s (which I did manage for 2025).
Clear the Clutter
My hope is to start retirement with a (mostly) decluttered home. The thought of having to spend several years shoveling out my house in order to enjoy it is… dispiriting.
My goals last fall included actually donating the contents of my donate box, lowering the level of my mail in-box, clearing my desk and possibly giving it away, and clearing up my office. What was I able to accomplish in the past 10 months?
My friend and I went to Goodwill, and I off-loaded about half of my donation pile. Most of the rest of the donation pile was given away via my local Buy Nothing group.
Preparing for a little party for my retirement-eligible friend led to clearing a lot of clutter around the living room.
Work on my office included shredding a pile of papers, and sorting through my collection of greeting cards and notes. I didn’t get rid of all of them, but was willing to part with a large bag. I left 2 more books in the local Little Free Library.
In addition to my decluttering efforts, I was surprised by Mr. PiN getting involved. He was ready to give away about a dozen tennis rackets; they were donated to a program that supplies racquets to interested kids with limited means.
Somehow, despite getting rid of a number of things, the piles around the house don’t seem any better.
This winter, I would love to totally clear my desk and possibly find it a new home. Additionally, my magazine and journal pile has grown at least 1 foot taller in the past few months, and I would like to whittle it down. If I can do all that and still have energy to do more, I have a corner in my home office that needs to be cleared.
Local Adventure
I love to travel, but I feel it’s important to enjoy the smaller pleasures around home. My goal was to go on 1-2 local adventures per month.
As it turns out, I wasn’t in town much; out of these 10 months, I took a trip in 4 of them. So I really had only 6 months where I wasn’t already doing something exciting.
During that time, I went to 2 new-to-me restaurants, attended 2 museum exhibit openings, and attended a book launch. That’s 5 “adventures,” nearly 1 per month spent at home.
It looks like I should probably work on exploring my town more. Though, honestly, it was pretty great to travel out of town too.
Reading
I love reading for fun and relaxation. I will certainly keep this up. That’s not what this section is about.
This is my challenge to myself to read the classics, or other books that make me work a bit.
I love re-reading old favorites, lately I have been challenging myself to read new books, even if they aren’t “the classics.”
Reviewing my list of books read, I managed 39 new (to me) titles. more than half my books read for the year (so far). Not all of them were highest quality literature, but at least they were something new for my brain to chew on.
I will keep reading on my list, with a challenge to try new authors. But eventually, I would like to read some of the “great books” that inspired me to put a reading challenge on my list in the first place.
Creative Activities
I have been writing for a couple years about three goals: blogging, knitting, and working on photo books.
I did very little here; even my blogging flagged.
I had to deal with a ton of energy-consuming projects for work and home this year. I would like to encourage creativity, but these projects clearly come behind work and other, more urgent, tasks.
Financial tasks
Last December, I wanted to shut down a savings account that had become more trouble than it was worth. And, of course, I planned to fund the 2026 Roth IRAs for Mr. PiN and me.
I managed all of those.
Of course, in an ironic turn of events, Mr. PiN recently opened up a new savings and checking account for a very good reason. Oh, well.
Going forward, the hard financial goals will center around rebalancing some investments without causing issues with the IRMAA limits. It’s possible Mr. PiN may need to be on Medicare part B in 2 years. so realizing too many gains now may result in very high insurance premiums later.
Also, Mr. PiN is starting to look at fixing up our home so we can age in place. This is likely to cost a lot more money than it would have pre-pandemic.
The easier goal will be to fund. our 2027 Roth IRAs early in 2027. It’s the only goal I feel pretty good about finishing before my next update.
In Summary
Despite feeling like I am not getting enough exercise, I haven’t done so poorly.
Ditto for my socializing efforts.
I’d like to keep up in those areas, while working a bit more on other areas– especially, perhaps, endeavors related to the imagination.
There are no guarantees, but I think if I can manage these updates more frequently, I will be more likely to make progress. We will see.
What goals, if any, do you have for the next few months? Or the year?