a revelation about being retired.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

18. Not sure how much this applies to volunteers overall,

but one thing I noticed at the hospital, which depended heavily on volunteers for a lot of things back ten years ago, less so now, is how old the volunteers were, and how few younger people were showing up to volunteer.

The generations ahead of the Boomers, a significant percentage of women never worked outside the home, and tended to do a lot of volunteering especially once their kids were grown. A significant percentage of Boomer women have worked almost all their adult lives and did minimal volunteering while raising kids, and for the most part never got into doing it later. I know that on this thread several people have already spoken happily about their own volunteer work, but I honestly think that overall people under the age of 70 are far less likely to do volunteer work than those older. It will be interesting to see how all this plays out as Boomers move steadily into their retirement years.

I'm like you. I like to get out of bed when I'm good and ready, laze about with a cup of coffee, always go to an afternoon movie, never an evening showing, not deal with rush hour traffic every day, stay up as late as I want. The list goes on. I was never enamored of working, but I also never had a job that I truly love. I simply went to work, did what I was supposed to, and got my paycheck. It's not so much that I'm envious of people who love what they do, it's that I cannot begin to imagine what that would be like.

My condolences on losing your dog. When I moved to where I currently am I had three cats, and they were all over the age of 10. Needless to say, none of them are with me any more, and as much as I'd love to have another cat or two in my life, I do just enough travelling to make that not a good idea. Someday, perhaps. I have already told my son that if he ever needs to put me in a nursing home, just be sure to find one that has resident cats. I could never get so senile that I wouldn't want to be around them. When I was just three years old I made my mother, who hated cats, crazy because I was constantly dragging home strays.