Bless this retirement

I love receiving unexpected gifts of wisdom on my Journey! 
Jerry and I recently had a great conversation. He works with a man in his mid 60's who retired and then found himself wanting to return to the workforce after a short time. He loved his work but retired because it was that time in his life; the next thing to do. 
He gave Jerry and some of his pre retirement colleagues some very sound wisdom. He said that if he had to do it over, he would have had a "plan" upon retirement. Not an "I'll do what a want, rest, travel, golf, relax" plan either. A real thought out plan. Many I know who retire seem to just sit under the radar of life. They mill around, watch tv, or news, go out to eat etc. 
A real "plan" includes some thought, even possibly writing down and even beginning in preretirement taking small steps to move gently toward the plan. Sometimes, when people retire they have expectations that require others to take part in their life and they end up disappointed that the others in their plan didn't come through for one reason or another, i.e. Adult children, family members, etc. 
Maybe the secret to a successful retirement is finding and beginning to define joyful things in preretirement and acting on these things with small monthly projects. Then when retirement creeps up on us, we just step it up a notch and continue on a larger scale with those interests. Then we would have something we could do occasionally that we enjoy around our full time jobs, that we can move into in our retirement. I believe the plan should include other people in some capacity. Painting, hiking and biking is great, but a small activity that requires human outside interaction or offering guidance occasionally brings purpose and connectedness as we leave our jobs and our work families so the grief isn't so heavy as we make the transition. 
I started a spiritual business alongside my job about 5 years ago, and although I don't get to enjoy my spiritual business as much as I would like to now, I do what I can around my full time job responsibilities, and look forward to moving it up a notch when I retire. The beauty is that I have established the interest before retirement so I can step gently from my work family into my other business family without so much focus being on the energy of grief of leaving my long career and work family behind. It's almost like parenting. There's nothing more joyful than raising kids. But then as the plan is designed, they leave the nest. If we have a "plan" as they are growing up, that allows us to focus on something outside of our parenting jobs just a little, we can gently move into the other interest as the children move out and start their lives, without so much focus on the grief that accompanies empty nest. 
This man's wisdom was sort of an epiphany to me on how to stand up to grief and letting go with a "plan" that gives us the option to keep our face toward the light at all times. Everyone wins; we do, our family, our friends, the people we serve and our work colleagues. Life is really a constant flow of dealing with change. I see this "plan" plan as a win-win while entering our retirement years.  Denise Lucille