Mr Red, even though I'm a useless gardener, I am leaning towards joining the community garden in our suburb. Walking there won't be much exercise because it is across the road and down a bit. but helping them to set up in their new place would be good exercise and the local suburb social/community spirit is all you could wish for and more.

There could be opportunities at their community events too, if they have a market stall day I could sell some prints of my paintings which are almost all of the local area, or there might be an opportunity to play some music. There is a local ukulele group, I think, or maybe I could convince some of our session group to go along to an event to play some music.

Despite a 12 year period when I wasn't in permanent work, my financial situation is ok with superannuation, so I think the money side will be ok. If not, there are other options for income generation based on my varied employment skills.

I'm not grieving the loss of my job. I was over it, well and truly, but not the work itself which I loved. I have been grieving the loss of the ability to just go to work, do my work, and enjoy it before the management boffins started mucking about with it all, over and over again, year after year after year.

When they told our unit we were relocating to a place an hour or two's drive away, that was the last straw. I stayed on as a union rep to help the others but my plan was just to retire when the unit relocated. Our union campaigns worked after two years of fully armoured battle, all guns blazing, bringing out the big union guns, and the management boffins changed their minds, but by then the thought of retiring had settled into my brain and spirit, so I retired anyway.

I have no doubt that when the mental and emotional hamster wheel stops spinning, I'll be wondering why I didn't retire years earlier.