I own(ed?) a small business, in field I’ve been in for almost 30 years. I loved the work I do, but I no longer loved the stress and I was feeling serious burnout. For months, since a long overdue rate increase wasn’t met with a positive response from my biggest client, I’d been feeling the overwhelm. I’d been wondering if all the hustle was still worth it. I’d been planning on retiring later this year, but after a particularly odd week, the hubs told me to push the button. Do the thing. Give notices to my clients, and officially start my early retirement. Sounds easy, right? It was…and it wasn’t. If you’re planning on retiring early, get ready. It’s a wild ride. Here’s how my first four weeks of retirement has gone, along with a one-minute summary of how it all transpired.

My small business was a social media agency. I had a tiny team and after 28+ years in big media, I loved helping small-to-medium businesses launch, grow, and evolve. My heart was in online community management, but social was also a blast. I loved the creativity…until there was no room for it. In a world where AI usage is becoming more prominent, too many businesses are wanting to follow every trend, copy everyone else, and do XX “because ChatGPT says..” while true experience, skills, and education go by the wayside. And then there’s ageism. Once you’re over a certain age, we no longer want to have to prove ourselves every single day, and we don’t want to race or compete for our place, and we can be targets for overly ambitious new people who want to take on the world…without doing the prep.

I had some amazing clients, all the way to the end. I look back and think about the incredible people I met, the businesses we worked with that are succeeding and thriving. I feel so lucky to have been a part of so much. I’ve got no regrets and feel privileged so many people invited me and my team to participate in their journey. For me, it is the sign of a career that felt less like work and more like fun.

To summarize: every single client I worked with sent me flowers, a gift, or even held a going away party (except one, haha). I was a part of so many amazing things and I look back on it all with nothing but a feeling of good fortune for having chosen a creative field that allowed me to grow, learn, and surround myself with knowledge and inspiration. Will I miss some of them? Most certainly. Will I miss the schedules and deadlines? Not a chance.

What fired me up for years — those very same deadlines and schedules and fire drills — has lost its allure. When it all started to feel like work, I realized I wanted to sign out before it showed in my performance. Early retirement has always been a goal, but it takes a lot of work and planning and probably a measure of luck. Every single client but one asked me if there was a way we could still work together. (Ironically, it was all the higher-paying clients.) They asked if I was able to work on a smaller scale, provide less deliverables, just do one-off live events. TBH, I felt bad saying no to most of them, because I had partnered with people I enjoyed being around. (And in the spirit of full candor, there are a couple where I left a small window for one-off things or some freelance writing. I don’t foresee ‘needing’ to work but if the right opportunity comes up where I can have fun and make money, cool, right?)

Here’s a takeaway: clients who expect things for less are always, without a doubt, the most demanding. Giving clients a discount helps them, not you, and you’re in business for profit. Planning for early retirement doesn’t allow for you to keep taking on people who don’t value you, only their own bottom line. Once you have retired, you can volunteer or work for less if you choose to, but to be financially responsible in your retirement planning, you have to put yourself first. Ask any business owner, and they’ll all tell you that those who nickel-and-dime you or refuse to meet your rate increase request will be the ones who expect weekend work, reach out after hours, or consistently question your work, schedule, or efforts. They may not be worth it.

So I’ve left that mess behind. This isn’t about dredging up annoyances, but being excited about finally not having to deal with them. Retirement doesn’t mean never doing anything for money, but having the freedom to do so when, and if, you choose. That’s such an incredible feeling. I don’t know what’s coming next, but now I can decide based on where I am if an opportunity arises, and what I’ve learned in the meantime.

Week one, I woke up and still had that heavy feeling of rush, rush, rush. I hurried through my morning routine of coffee with the pups on the balcony, watching the commuters rush to work. I would go water the garden and find myself thinking “oh shoot, I need to hurry so I can go check Slack, just in case.” Then my brain would remind me YOU DON’T NEED TO DO THAT ANYMORE. Anyone that’s used Slack ever probably will hear that indelible notification sound forever, and sometimes, it made me think of the movie, Christmas Vacation, where the family starts to arrive and the doorbell rings, sounding like impending doom. I didn’t want to look, but knew I’d have to, and not looking was just delaying the inevitable.

It wasn’t until week two that I started to feel the shift. I still had to remind myself that I didn’t have to hurry back to my laptop, and to help get it out of my mind, I moved it back upstairs to my official office. It was the first step in my new routine, one where work didn’t rule my day. I could go make a latte without looking up at the screen halfway through.

There were a lot of cold lattes over the years.

Towards the end of week two, I started removing things from my weekly schedule. This may seem counter-productive, but I needed time to reevaluate, to wake up in the morning and have no schedule. You don’t just retire and suddenly hop into all those things you say you want to do ‘when I have more time.’ You wander around the house instead, feeling ‘what do I do now?’ The idea of being able to pull out your acrylics and start painting feels forced. I wanted my transition to feel organic. Did I really want to paint? Or was it just something I resented I had no time for?

I ended up spending almost an entire week going nowhere other than my physical therapy appointments (I’m six months post-op lower back surgery) and hot yoga. It was GLORIOUS.

Get up, have coffee on the balcony, do a brain dump list of anything I absolutely had to accomplish (make that mani-pedi appointment, order a birthday gift, etc.), and then just relax. I’d focus on positives: I can go to restorative yoga today, I will make zucchini bread, I’ll put together the items to make crafts with the grandbabies. I’d push the HAVE TOs out of my head otherwise. Planning dinner, deciding when to have the couches cleaned, and other chores waited until later. That morning routine was designed to be my sacred space of ‘no work.’

I wish I could say it was always successful. It wasn’t. Forty-six years of working habits don’t die in a matter of weeks. In fact, I’ve been told it takes months, if not a year, so I’m still very much in the early stages. I don’t celebrate my one-month of not working for another few days. It feels like a lot longer in some ways, yet certain computer sounds and times still bring back some of that work anxiety.

Let’s talk about that anxiety a bit. Many retirees, especially those in early retirement, experience financial worries. Then there’s the ‘did I retire too early?’ For me, I’ve had more than a few days of ‘I could have worked longer.’ I’m not a quitter, and retiring early can make you feel like one….if you let it. I have one child at home still, but I’m not what you’d call a full-time mom anymore either. I could have tolerated things longer and accrued more money, but you get to a point in life where you know your time is needed elsewhere, and you have to stop feeling guilty about making that pivot.

Some things going on in our family require my attention, more now than they did years ago. Due to some prior sacrifice and changes, I can now put my time where it’s more needed. Clients will move on tomorrow and be fine; most employers and clients move on quickly and don’t think about us. We’re ALL replaceable. We all like to think ‘they need me,’ but people who need you — AND appreciate and value you — will pay you more, or they’ll make concessions to compensate if they can’t. They won’t just keep asking for more, more, more. Those askers take time off your life, and not just the now, but they eat into your future. The stress they cause you isn’t good for your health, both physical and mental.

Life’s too short to continue to lose time that our family deserves instead. The anxiety may not disappear overnight, but we can find ways to address it. Seek financial counsel if needed, maybe talk to a therapist, take walks, meet with other early retirees. Sometimes it’s just the feeling of residual anxiousness, and so far, I think all it takes is time. I mean, I don’t know, I still have shades of anxiety about not getting things done, not being productive, and being ‘lazy,’ so I am doing all I can to help it fade.

Week three was easier. I don’t listen for Slack. I don’t check my Google calendar. I don’t check an extra to-do list to be sure nothing’s falling through the cracks; I still create my morning list, and before bed I do a ‘brain dump,’ which has been proven to help improve sleep.

One big surprise is that I’m still enjoying keeping my schedule as wide open as possible. That feeling of just getting ‘to be’ is so undervalued, and I don’t think I fully understand it even yet. I thought by now, four weeks out, give or take, I’d be desperate to add in more social events to compensate.

Not even a little.

I have added more yoga into my schedule, doing 3-5 sessions per week now, but I am excited about waking up when my body says, lingering over my breakfast, ordering things to be delivered instead of going to get them, and just moving slowly. Sometimes that’s deliberate, because I can easily find myself running far faster than I need to, but I also still work hard to get in my 8,000 steps per day, which is a habit I’m not willing to change. I’ve rearranged my office and yoga rooms to be more usable in new lifestyle. I went through my closet. (Twice.) Next up? Organizing some incredible new cookbooks from my mother-in-law’s collection into my already pretty massive library.

I also spend way less time on social media. I recommend a hiatus of any sort to anyone who can. There’s a litany of reasons why this is good for us all mentally. I took apps off my phone and deleted logins on my machines.

Another takeaway: don’t dilly-dally on removing yourself from your business/client platforms, sites, wherever. It’s too easy to get sucked back in, and if you truly leave, LEAVE. (They won’t all think of this initially, and it’s great that they trust you enough to not feel rushed to lock you out, but it also leaves the door open for them to reach out to you. Cut the cord.)

It may seem like I’m pulling away from society, and to an extent, that’s true, but I was too involved before my retirement.

Speaking of sleep (way above), my schedule hasn’t changed yet. I’m still waking mostly at the same time as before, and I don’t know if that’s permanent. I’m a night owl, up to 11pm-midnight, so I’d hoped to maybe get closer to eight hours of sleep. That may just be a dream, who knows.

Whatever I decide on, I need to tell my dog. When I breathe different after 5:30am, she’s ready to go.

Early retirement isn’t a thing that happens in one day. It’s a process. It’s transition to a new phase of life. I didn’t have a party — which was my choice. We went out to dinner, which sufficed by way of recognition. Each day is a mini celebration….even when I stay in my jammies until 8am, go nowhere, and my biggest achievement is deciding what to make for dinner.

If you’re planning to retire early, I’m not giving you financial advice, but I will say to set your expectations accordingly. Give yourself grace. You will wander around so much that suddenly it’s 3pm and you’re wondering what you did all day….and that’s okay.

You’ll find yourself considering your budget, even if you don’t have to, because it takes some time to get into a rhythm. Go out to lunch, since you have time now? Or make it at home, because lunch out is expensive. Place that Amazon order or go clothes shopping? Your mind will again go to your bank account. I recommend you seek financial counsel to help make sure you’re all set before you quit, and to help you understand the ins and outs of securing medical insurance if you don’t have a spouse still working who carries health coverage.

And that’s a whole new topic, because there’s a big gap between 60-65 in coverage. It’s incredibly expensive on its own, some states being worse than others, and it can change yearly depending on your income. Subsidies exist, as does Medi-cal or Medicaid, but you can’t necessarily keep your current medical team if you switch to a state-funded program. Ask the questions in advance so you’re not left with surprises. I’m no pro in that regard; I’m still on my husband’s insurance, and I’m still quite a few years away from Medicare….which I know is a whole new can of worms.

Whether you’ve already retired early or you’re planning for an early retirement, I hope my experience helps you — even if it’s just knowing that it’s okay to not know what to do with yourself. I’ve talked to several retired people who told me their versions and we’re all pretty similar, except for the one person who immediately hopped on a plane and spent a month overseas in an apartment in Paris. (How cool, right??)

If any of this resonates with you, or helps you, or if you just want to talk about it more, I’d love it if you commented below! I wish you the best!