Psychology says people who find the first year of retirement harder than any year of work aren’t failing to enjoy freedom — they’re grieving a structure that provided identity, routine, and the low-level human contact that kept loneliness at bay without anyone noticing
My dad spent the better part of forty years walking into the same office. When he finally retired, we threw him the dinner, made the toasts, and told him he’d earned every slow morning coming his way. He smiled and agreed. Six months later he was one of the loneliest men I knew, …