Article Surfing Archive

Someone once said: *A lot of people who look forward to an eternity of peace don*t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Saturday afternoon.* It seems to be generally accepted by a lot of people who are getting on in years, that if only they can save enough money for retirement, they'll finally have that time of relaxation they*ve been looking for. Anyway, that's what a friend of mine thought. He and his wife were able to save a good chunk of money and when he retired a few years ago, he figured his time had come. But it wasn*t too many months later that he realized that for the first time in his life, he was seriously depressed. He was flabbergasted. He*d worked his whole life thinking that retirement was going to be the high point of his life, but that wasn*t anything like the way it was working out. That's when he talked with me about his situation.

It didn*t take us long to figure out what was wrong. Up until retirement, there was hardly a day in his life when he didn*t have a bunch of challenges confronting him. He had a job that forced him to constantly solve problems. Solving problems made him tired * and one of the biggest appeals of retirement was the idea he wouldn*t be tired any more * but what he didn*t catch on to until after retirement is that solving problems also made him feel alive. His depression, it was clear to me, was being caused by a life of challenge-less fun.

So what to do. He didn*t want to go back to his old job * or to any regular job * because the bureaucracy of it annoyed him. He thought about volunteer work, and though he liked the idea of helping others, he was afraid that most of what he would be asked to do wouldn*t be solving interesting problems. And then he came up with an idea that turned out to be brilliant. He asked me if he could work for me * for free, but only on interesting problems. I jumped at the idea because my company had plenty of interesting problems that needed attention, but I couldn*t afford to hire anyone to focus on them, so they just hung around until they got so bad I had to attend to them. My friend started working for me four months ago, and since then, things have gotten way better for both of us * I have way fewer problems, and he's happy as a clam.