For post-retirement work, it is best to find something you 'want to do,' 'can do,' 'is useful to others,' and 'allows you to learn.'

Four years have passed since I retired. It feels like it went by in a flash, even though it is about the same amount of time it takes to enter and graduate from university. That might be because I am juggling two jobs: working as a part-time employee and as a web writer.

From a few months before reaching retirement age, I had been thinking about what I would do after retiring.
What are the things I 'want to do,' 'can do,' 'are useful to others,' 'allow me to learn,' and 'provide a little bit of income'? What could they be?

The safest option is to continue working at the same workplace after retirement through re-employment. I know the job content and the interpersonal relationships. It seems the workload would be reduced to about 70% of what it was, but the salary would likely be reduced even more than that.

So, I felt like I wanted to try a different kind of work than before. However, no matter how much of a labor shortage there is, it is difficult for a woman who has reached retirement age to find a job when job hunting. Even looking at job advertisements in newspaper flyers, there are very few jobs other than cleaning or caregiving.

Around the time I was wondering whether to hope for re-employment, my colleague M invited me to become a part-time employee at a certain government office. It is a job where I listen to both sides of domestic troubles, such as inheritance or divorce, and think of solutions.

It was a type of job I had never thought of for myself after retirement. However, listening to both parties' arguments from a neutral standpoint and resolving troubles has some similarities to the work I had been engaged in until then. I didn't know if I could do it, but I wanted to try, so I applied and was lucky enough to be hired.

That said, I don't go to that job every day. Is there anything else I could do? One day before I retired, while thinking about such things, the title 'Earn 1 Million Yen a Month Through Writing' caught my eye at a bookstore I stopped by on my way home from work.

I thought, 'There's no way I can earn 1 million yen a month,' and walked past it at first, but the term 'writing entrepreneurship' somehow piqued my interest, and I ended up buying the book. There, I learned about the system of crowdsourcing, which connects clients (people requesting work) and workers (people who want to do writing jobs, etc.), and I started working as a web writer.

I had no experience in either job, but I wanted to try them. I wanted to try because I thought that by utilizing my past work experience and my experience writing essays and scenarios, I might be able to do those jobs myself.

Both jobs are tough because there are things to research and new things to learn, but I gain a lot of knowledge. There is also a synergistic effect between the two jobs, such as the knowledge and listening skills I gained at the government office being useful for interviews when creating web articles.

I feel that the things I thought about before retiring—'wanting to do,' 'being able to do,' 'being useful to others,' and 'being able to learn'—are being fulfilled quite well. It is a happy thing to be able to do what I want by utilizing my own knowledge and experience, and on top of that, to learn new things.

I am still inexperienced in my work at the government office and am often helped by the seniors I work with. I cannot call myself an advanced web writer yet either. While receiving a little bit of compensation, my days of training will continue.