The Bucket List, Ms.K’s Version

Every now and then I have this overwhelmed feeling of all the awesome things I would like to do but do not have enough time to do right now, often when am thick in the middle of a good and inspiring read or after a great movie. I have the recurring thought – this is what I want to do with all my time post retirement.

Side note: I always remind myself that activities I want to do post retirement are activities I can do now in possibly lesser quantities as retirement is a journey to enjoy, not just a destination. Retired Ms.K is still Ms.K!

2nd side note: This is generally followed by the thought of how my days actually are – a complete whir of activities concerning the boys and the household. No rest for the wicked!

So today is a desktop research and bucket list of what I would like to do post-retirement and how I can incorporate that into my current life, perhaps Mr.C would make his list. He’s usually the one with endless activities and interests to pursue whereas I’m typically stuck after 2-3 avenues. I won’t be surprised if Mr.C came up making incredible artwork in Excel, he’s a random fella!

Exercise

I foresee a lot more dedication to our body and our health post retirement. Whether feasible or not, here’s a list I would like to pursue:

1. Kickboxing – I have an image of me practicing hardcore kickboxing / muay thai in Thailand when we live there. I used to do do kickboxing once a week pre-pregnancy with CocoJr#2. I went to the extent of buying my own gloves and padding. It was in my wardrobe till last week when I took it out and asked Mr.C to help me practice. We did it in our living room with CocoJr#1 watching and having a quick lesson himself on the basics. CocoJr#2 was nearby, calm amidst the chaos. It was great to get into it again! For now, I will aim to practice with Mr.C at least once a week for now!
2. Wall climbing – confession: I have a slight fear of heights. With my NLP background I can wipe out fears in 3 minutes tops and have made money out of it during coaching sessions (fear of cockroaches, lizards, closed areas, heights, public speaking… you name it). However I have not worked on it myself, primarily because I like feeling the fear and overcoming it by willpower at that moment. A strange sense of achievement. I did the Via Ferrata at Orchard Central (30m!) as part of a company event maybe 5 years ago. Mr.C came along as I was freaking out beforehand but I still went for it and I still feel good about it! For now, I’ll fix my shoulder ( a bit of an injury there) and find a place that allows 4 year olds to climb. Coco#1 wants to climb and we’re into fam-bam activities, i.e. we haven’t figured out a way to not melt at our kid’s requests to join us out 😉 If this whole climbing this takes off, then what I have read in terms of climbing big cliffs and not dying is going to be crazy useful!

Leisure

1. Water Activities – Mr.C and I quite like water related activities. I wrote Water Sports first then I scratched that, I prefer a leisurely pace to my water activities. I foresee more time spent on the water on these activities: kayaking, stand-up paddling, wind-surfing and sailing. Mr.C has done his sailing course and loves to sail, till Singapore waters got too wild for our liking. Hello Mr.Croc 🙁 For now, I ain’t going anywhere near the water!
2. Cooking! Yep I love cooking and whipping up amazing meals, even if I do say so myself! We cook everyday now and it’s deliciously simple and healthy food but we do like to try a variety of different cooking styles. Just 2 weeks ago Mr.C made this heavenly honey glazed ribs, it was delightful and left us all sucking at the rib bones. We do the “For now,” bit really well here, especially with inspiration coming from the cooking pages on Facebook!
3. I used to be an avid reader growing up, the usual suspects include Enid Blyton’s books (2nd confession, very embarrassing: when I was young, I thought the author’s name was Grid Blyton from the way the name was signed on the cover). My reading now is rather sporadic. I reckon we’ll be spending a lot more time in the library picking up random titles of interest and devouring it. For now, I will be reading at least 10 mins a day. I figured there’s never the ‘right’ time to read with hours of uninterrupted time, sipping a cuppa and losing myself in the book till I complete it. 10 mins a day or even 1 page a day will mean that I will eventually finish the book 😉

Travel

This could have been the entire post, however we do strive for balance in life! The biggest draw to retirement is travelling and slow-travelling. The world is massive and there’s so much we want to discover on our own pace and not just hit the common tourist destinations. We want to live and savour what the country has to offer and mingle with the peeps on the ground.

For a while now I have been speaking to Mr.C about living out of a RV as we travel, I can’t say I’ve seen the idea taking as yet until last week when Mr.C sent me an article about how bad air travel is for Earth. I shall let this idea simmer for a bit 😉

I need not set a for now goal here. We end up with annual travels effortlessly :p

Family Time

This is not necessarily just with our boys and our immediate family. We are lucky that we do see our immediate family quite often, even the ones that are on different continents. More time with them would be lovely! I don’t see us doing much of this in the interim as that would eat into our savings & FIRE investment. So for now video calls will have to do!

Working that mental muscle

The genius of this quote is simple yet so profound. To learn, you must be willing to admit that you are in need of the knowledge. That you are lacking all that there is to know. If not, you will not engage and be open to ideas that you might not have known before. Quite simply, there is no one that knows everything that there is to know! I admit, what I know is a drop in the ocean and I open myself to learning something new everyday. With a child who asks WHY more times a day then he does to watch Paw Patrol or eat chocolate, I’m truly reminded more often than I would like to that I know not enough! The constant mantra we have adopted in the SippingCoconut’s household is ‘What we do not know, we will learn” to a point when I stumble with an answer Jr#1 tells me to “ask Google, mummy”.

Off the top of my head, I want to learn coding, value investing as Mr.C does, philosophy and in particular Stoicism, geography and history and space travel and culture and even functional and practical maths (not the kind of maths like algebra I learnt in school without seeing how it’s actually useful!). For now, I can start small. Wiki these topics. Khan Academy has bite-sized lessons that are free for the curious to consume. YouTube isn’t just for watching Jimmy Fallon and Graham Norton 😉

Coaching

I’ve established that coaching individuals for me is about feeding my soul, it’s my passion versus ever doing it for the money. I have a skill that improves the quality of a persons life significantly and I would do anything in my capacity as a coach to do just that for it gives me great joy to see the change after. I coach now occasionally by way of word of mouth after I shut down my coaching as a business website early last year. I certainly would like to do more of it, in person or over video-conferencing.

Social Development

We both like the idea of doing social work and helping those who are in need. We have typically found ways to do this, for along time it was via World Vision then a few years ago through an organisation that involved me heading over to Chiang Mai to work with indigenous women to help develop strategies and awareness to turn their craft skills into a business model that would self-sustain. Haven’t done much in this space in recent years, I would love to get back into it, in whatever scale possible. It’s always been a dream of mine to work for a NGO and it remains one of my regrets in life (perhaps the only regret) to turn down a role to work for a renowned NGO as it involved me taking a pay-cut. This was 4 years ago when I couldn’t imagine taking a pay-cut, only to stop work altogether soon after to care for Coco#1. The irony 😉 Oh well, my for now is to research on what I can do and connect with like-minded folks here in Singapore, I’ve sussed out a group and will get into it more when I’m off work and into some form of routine with the 2 boys!

Your turn! What’s your list like for activities post-FIRE? Do you make it a part of your journey or do you keep it strictly for post-FIRE like you would that succulent, mouth-watering dessert at the end of the meal? It’s all fair play in the comments section, do share! Oh – in the event you are stuck for activities, check out this cool page on discovering a hobby!