Twenty-Five Signs You're Ready for Retirement: A Field Guide by Professor Stone Oakley

By Professor Stone Oakley, Ph.D. (Honorary, Self-Conferred) — Chair of the Department of Leisure Studies

1. You have begun referring to your commute as "a chapter that is now closed," in the tone people usually reserve for describing a war.

2. Your calendar app's busiest entry this month is "Dentist," and you are strangely thrilled about it.

3. You know the moment the mail arrives better than you ever knew your own meeting schedule.

4. You have opinions about golf carts. Strong ones. You did not have these three years ago.

5. "Business casual" has been fully replaced in your wardrobe by "whatever is soft and has no zipper."

6. You've started saying "back in my day" about software you were using eighteen months ago.

7. You can explain, unprompted and at length, the difference between a 4:00 PM and a 4:30 PM dinner reservation.

8. Your idea of a wild Tuesday now involves a farmers market and possibly a nap afterward.

9. You've read the entire HOA newsletter. Twice. On purpose.

10. You refer to your grandchildren's phones as "those little computers," and mean it as an insult.

11. You have a favorite bench. At a specific park. And you will fight, politely, for it.

12. You've begun timing your errands around when the pharmacy is "not busy," a schedule known only to you and God.

13. The phrase "I have nowhere to be" no longer sounds sad. It sounds like scripture.

14. You've started a hobby that requires a shed, a vest with many pockets, or both.

15. You know your resting heart rate, your neighbor's dog's name, and absolutely nothing about your old office's org chart, and you are at peace with all three.

16. You've caught yourself explaining a sunset to someone, out loud, as if narrating a documentary.

17. Your closet has more comfortable shoes than the entire cast of a musical.

18. You've started asking waiters for "the senior discount, if you have one," with the confidence of a man requesting his birthright.

19. You have a preferred grocery store checkout lane, and the cashier there knows your name.

20. You've considered, seriously, whether a pontoon boat is "a want or a need," and concluded it's both.

21. Your idea of multitasking is a crossword and a cup of coffee, and you resent anyone who suggests otherwise.

22. You've stopped setting an alarm and started waking up anyway, out of spite, at 6:12 AM.

23. You've researched community clubhouses with the intensity you once reserved for quarterly earnings reports.

24. You've said the words "I could get used to this" more times this year than in the previous decade combined.

25. You are currently reading an article by a man with a fake doctorate about whether you're ready for retirement, and you are nodding. That, dear reader, is the most telling sign of all.