Why You're Bored in Retirement (And It's Not a Character Flaw)

The Snow Day That Told Me Something Was OffIt's snowing hard enough that I'm not braving traffic to get to the gym. Too cold in the garage to tinker with anything. No new book on the nightstand, nothing worth watching on TV. So I do the thing you're not supposed to admit to doing in retirement: I sit there. Coffee, then the window, then the TV, then lunch, then the window again. And honestly? That day was fine. Good, even. Sometimes you need a day like that — your mind needs a break from grandkids and elderly parents and whatever else retirement quietly loads onto you when nobody's looking. The problem isn't that day. The problem is when that day turns into a habit. What Retirement Boredom Actually Looks Like (Not the Commercial Version)I know because it happened to me. A couple of times, mostly in winter, I strung together enough of those days — channel-clicking, doomscrolling, no direction to any of it — that it stopped being restorative and started being something else. Nobody in…