A friend of mine was recently laid off; it was more or less a surprise (she saw some of it coming, but was a bit in denial about it). She is only a couple years younger than I am, and her financial advisor told her she could retire now, if she wanted. Her reaction was that retiring was less effort than looking for another job in her specialized field and at her age, so she might as well retire (not exactly looking forward to retiring, it sounds), and then she mentioned that she would write a (technical) book or do some consulting in her retirement.
I know several people who are doing consulting as a way to "ease into" retirement, and it seems to work well for some and not so well for others (I think the difference is whether you have one or more clients to get you started). The only people I know who are writing technical books in retirement are people who were writing books before they retired -- I don't know anyone who took this up as a post-worklife activity. My interpretation here is that my friend is not really ready to retire, but feels pushed out of the nest. And I think the core resistance to retirement for this friend is not money or boredom, but that her personal identity is tied up in her professional life.
When I first seriously considered retiring, about 7 years ago (I knew I wanted to leave my job -- was it worth hunting for a new one, or should I just move into the next stage of my life?), I kept getting hung up on the fact that I wouldn't see the people I regularly see at conferences, I wouldn't have some of the intellectually challenging conversations I often have at work or with colleagues from other companies (I might have them with different people on different topics, but not the ones I was accustomed to), and when people asked me "what do you do?" I would say 'I'm retired'. (it's a little pretentious to say 'I'm a retired xxx', in my opinion, and besides, all people hear is "blah blah retired blah blah"). That made me recognize that I wasn't ready to be retired, even though I might be ready to retire. But having that discussion with myself made me take more notice of the upsides of retirement (the opportunities to meet new people and discuss new topics), and to notice that I gradually got less and less invested in my role as a "UX person". I also had lots of "been there, done that" experiences, where I started to feel like everything I was doing was a minor variant of a previous experience, so I wasn't working because of the unique experiences it brought me. The need to introduce myself by my professional handle gradually went away, and the idea that I would either not mention a profession (let them think that I sat at home and ate bon-bons for the last 40 years) or identify myself as retired sort of grew on me. That, more than anything else, made me feel I was ready to retire.
I don't know how to help anyone get to that stage, and it did take me seven years, but I do think it is an important step. Of course, many people end up in situations like my friend, where they don't get to choose the timing of their retirement. I'll let you know what I learn from seeing her make the transition (assuming she doesn't look for and find another job).
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