@Ann France What about volunteer tutoring? Adults, children, teens. There must be a lot of students who have fallen behind due to distance learning the last year. Or maybe English as a second language. Seems like you would be exceptionally well qualified.
Ann, do you have family (children, brothers, sisters, cousins) or friends? That will make a big difference in my advice.
It's hard to offer any ideas without knowing the circumstances. When I retired, I did some traveling with family. We made some happy memories. If your health is good enough and you have family that will go on trips with you, I suggest that.
Welcome and I too sometimes feel a little hopeless now in this pandemic. Hope we can help you feel less hopeless. Today I took a short walk and did a little dance 'if thats what ya wanna call it'.. Getting in motion makes me feel better if even just a little.
That is great Faye! I am just getting back into it after sitting around on my buns too long, a few month s ago I danced a lot. At my age it doesn't take long to deteriate if I don't move.
I retired as a director of engineering but taught math for 5 years, which might me somewhat eligible to respond. Since retiring, I have not gotten involved in anything related to any job ever held. The best retirement path for me was learning new things about subjects I was interested in (e.g., photography, woodworking, trains, motorcycles, etc.) Doing this led me to make acquaintances that further helped broaden my horizons and interests. Allied with this has been the opportunity to pass along or share things with others (e.g., how to program and use a CNC machine, learning to fly a drone to take pictures and videos, etc.) These paths have resulted in meeting/communicating with some wonderful and interesting people. Anyway, that's the recipe that's given me a good and full retirement life. At the core, though, it's always the good people that make it rich. .
Hi Ann and welcome! I also felt lost when I first retired three years ago as a vocational rehabilitation counselor, my job was not so much a job as my passion and true vocation but I had to retire due to extreme burn out and figuratively having my hands tied when I wanted so much to help others but the system would not allow me to do so as I had done in the past years. So here I am three years into retirement and I have finally gotten to the point where I feel settled. Some people would not like to be settled per se but that sweet spot was what I was looking for. I struggled to find something to fulfill myself and discovered that sometimes the best part of the day is having nothing to fulfill anything or anybody…I do have somewhat of a schedule but I keep it loose and I’m a Florida girl so everything for me is on beach time. No worries no rush! I wish you a joyful retirement and after you get settled you’ll get into the swing of things and hopefully you will grow to love your free time as I have learned to do. God bless !
The Country types use the 5-string Banjo. The Dixieland Jazz types use the 4-string Tenor Banjo. I play 4-string. Hal