you know, all that, you talk about when you retire, like the stress just falls away. And for me,

it did. And you don't realize how much stress you're under until actually, you know, you're done.

And it's like, and even then, too, it's like, it's not like all the stress, like, automatically

lifts off your shoulders. It's basically something, it's like, it took a few weeks for me to go ahead and finally realize.

I'm like, wow, I don't have to get up at 6 a.m. anymore.

I don't have to respond to emails at 11.30 at night because my colleague in Asia Pacific is having a problem.

It was great to go ahead and not be able to have to worry about that.

What if retirement feels less like a number and more like taking off a 30-pound jacket you forgot you were wearing?

Today you'll hear from Christian, who spent 30 years on-call 24-7 and had no idea how stressed he was until he retired and that stress alleviated.

So if you've ever wondered what the first 18 months of retirement actually feel like, liberating, different, maybe even a little bit surprising, this episode's for you.

Thank you for joining me today, Christian.

How long have you been retired for now?

I've been retired now about 18 months.

I retired in March of 2024.

And what did you do for work prior to retiring?

I worked for a major chemical manufacturing

company. I worked in the regulatory department as a system specialist to help generate and

process documents needed to ship chemicals globally. All right. So a career there, 18 months of

retirement. If you could describe these first 18 months of retirement in one word, what would you use?

Different is something I would go ahead and use as a word.

Obviously, retirement for me was I was fully prepared to go into a dollar's ready to retire.

But it never like life, it never works out exactly as you think it's going to go ahead and work out.

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