{"id":622,"date":"2021-12-20T13:30:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-20T13:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moneywithkatie.com\/worried-youll-be-bored-if-you-retire-early-try-this-instead\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T20:47:42","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T20:47:42","slug":"worried-youll-be-bored-if-you-retire-early-try-this-instead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moneywithkatie.com\/worried-youll-be-bored-if-you-retire-early-try-this-instead\/","title":{"rendered":"What It Means if You\u2019re Worried about Boredom in Early Retirement"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Before \u201cMoney with Katie\u201d was a thing, O.G. readers will recall that I had an eponymous blog that featured every life hot take under the sun \u2013 my content topics knew no bounds.<\/p>\n

It was HSA tips and skincare peppered with thoughts on relationships and \u201cadulting,\u201d which was a pretty accurate reflection of my interests at the time.<\/p>\n

(Who would\u2019ve thought the HSA tips section would emerge the victor for a personal finance-only site?)<\/p>\n

During that time, I was in the gap between finishing my post-grad summer internship and starting full-time work at the same company. Because companies with tens of thousands of employees have dinosaur-sized compliance departments and background checks powered by Windows \u201887, there were about three weeks between the last day of my internship and the start of my full-time job.<\/p>\n

Whenever I had long breaks in college, I would look to what was coming next and prepare: Getting a jump on a new class\u2019s syllabus reading, laying the groundwork for another semester in an extracurricular\u2026 there always seemed to be something<\/em> to do during breaks, even the long ones.<\/p>\n

Not during this break.<\/p>\n

During this break, I was rudderless.<\/p>\n

I had no idea what my full-time job would entail because I hadn\u2019t yet seen a real job description. I didn\u2019t have a company computer or access to any of my work. Side hustles weren\u2019t yet a twinkle in my eye (because I was big ballin\u2019 on $52,000\/year, remember? I didn\u2019t need no side hustle!<\/em>), so I didn\u2019t have work outside<\/em> of work to keep me busy, either.<\/p>\n

I spent the first week of my three-week-long no-man\u2019s-land furnishing my new apartment and learning how to use an electric stove from the late 1990s.<\/p>\n

By the end of that week, I was ready to pull my hair out.<\/p>\n

Who was I, outside the confines of responsibility? It was only three weeks, but it felt like an entire summer passed as the days crawled by more or less the same.<\/p>\n

The paradox of free time<\/h2>\n

I wrote a blog post at the time about how free time is valued so highly for your average blue- or white-collar worker \u2013 we work all week looking forward to Friday and the sweet, unencumbered bliss of 48 hours to spend however we please.<\/p>\n

But endless<\/em> free time? Unpunctuated free time? Free time that expands to the horizon? It\u2019s unnerving.<\/p>\n

It forces us to ask ourselves:<\/p>\n

Who am I without the things that I thought<\/em> made me \u201cme\u201d?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s funny, in retrospect, that I was losing my mind with three weeks of time off, but would soon become obsessed with the FI\/RE movement after only six full months of working full-time and realizing, Wait, this <\/em>ain\u2019t it.<\/em><\/p>\n

But that period taught me something really crucial: Even at 22, I was so focused on making a living that I didn\u2019t really know what I wanted for my life<\/em>. What were my hobbies? What did I do for fun? Who did I want to be?<\/p>\n

I had never thought deeply about these questions before because I never needed to<\/em>.<\/p>\n

High school and college were 8 straight years of studying and extracurriculars (and then partying on the weekends to try to decompress), and the post-grad rat race to find gainful employment was all-consuming psychologically and emotionally.<\/p>\n

When I got my first full-time job, I felt like that was it. Box checked! Accomplishment complete! Time to clock in for 40 years then hit the Florida condo circuit.<\/p>\n

My identity, in a lot of ways, became contingent upon where I could get a job offer or how full my social calendar was for the week.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t really have time to stop and slow down to reflect on who (and what) I wanted to be \u2013 I was up early for work and focused on impressing enough of the Real Adults\u2122 around me for 9 hours a day.<\/p>\n

After work, I\u2019d have to make the very difficult decision<\/em> between heading to a workout class or happy hour, but I was almost always at one or the other \u2013 rarely<\/em> did I go home after work and just be.<\/em><\/p>\n

By the time my day would end, I\u2019d flop down on my bed, watch an episode or two on Netflix, and pass out. Repeat. Introspection? Nah.<\/p>\n

Having 3 weeks of seemingly endless free time forced me to take an uncomfortable look at myself<\/h2>\n

To make matters more hilarious, the few close friends I had in Dallas at the time were abroad for almost the entire duration of my Funemployment \u2013 so I couldn\u2019t fully distract myself with socializing. And besides, all my other new friends already worked full-time. They weren\u2019t interested in hitting the pool at noon on a Wednesday, because they were at the office.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll always think fondly of that period, though, because it was the first time in my adult life in which I realized a few crucial truths about myself:<\/p>\n