One aspect of my career that has ‘invaded’ my early retirement is living with an electronic calendar. Perhaps I was naive, but I thought I would be gleefully off the digital date keeper once I left MegaCorp.

After decades of having my days organized with electronic group calendaring software – from early Higgins to Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook – I thought it would be simple enough to keep a paper calendar. That’s all that my wife & retired parents used – they didn’t need to be tied to a digital calendar.

Related: Daily Schedule in Early Retirement

At MegaCorp, coordinating calendars and meetings was an almost full-time affair. I was blessed to have the help of a dedicated assistant – delightful & conscientiousness Carol – for about 10 years. It was chaos. She kept me on track day after day – through as many as 12 meetings a day – and would update me constantly as my calendar changed during the day. When I switched companies, wonderful Tara assumed watch over the daily mayhem.

I thought early retirement would be different, with only an occasional dentist appointment to keep track of. Yet, now my phone has 3 digital calendars on it and we still average 2-5 appointments every day. Lunch with an old colleague, tennis/softball/curling league schedules, cable TV appointment, board conference call, book club, or ‘Dive Bar Tuesday‘ – there is still a lot of calendaring to be done.

In fact, the most notable change in our household is that my wife & college-student son have also been sucked into the electronic age and no longer keep paper calendars. I guess what I thought was purely a MegaCorp phenomena is now just part of everyday life!

Image Credit: Apple.support.com