Networking, n (1940) – the exchange of information or services among individuals, groups, or institutions (Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary)

Remember all of those networking skills you developed and polished during your years of full-time employment?  That annoyingly thick stack of business cards and/or rolodex of names and numbers you collected from all and sundry who dropped into your office?

Well, here’s another tidbit of retirement bad news. 

Don’t throw any of those networking skills or business cards out with the preverbal retirement bathwater. 

‘Cause your gonna be surprised at how much more “networking” you’re going to be doing now that you are retired (or gainfully unemployed as I like to think of it!)

Because remember, retirement isn’t simply ceasing to work full-time.  Heck, retirement isn’t even really retiring.  It’s just changing careers.  And the networking skill set you honed keeping your career moving forward is going to come in equally handy in helping you to keep your retirement career moving forward.

And networking to keep your retirement career moving forward is no different than the networking you did when you had a full-time career.

You just get out there and meet and talk to “industry” folk who have the same interests and motives that you have.

You go to all the industry trade shows and talk to all the industry reps.   You subscribe to all the industry journals.

Only now the “industry” you’re interested in is “retirement” ...

So whenever you go into your local library branch, community centre, etc., you peruse the brochure rack and check the bulletin boards for events and activities.

You regularly check your local parks and rec and local municipal government web sites.

You regularly check the web sites of groups and organizations that interest you.  And keep checking the sites of any industry groups you were involved with.

You subscribe, either by e-mail or by old fashioned postal delivery, to the newsletters published by your local library, your local municipality, the arts and culture groups in your area, the sports and recreation organizations in your neighbourhood.

You read the “upcoming events” calendar in the local newspaper (in my case, The Mississauga News).

And you’ve been keeping in touch, if only occasionally, with friends and former work mates, either retired or still working full-time.

And then, when you eventually find an event or group or activity that interests you …

... you do what you always did when you met new people in the same line of work as you.  You shake a few hands and start talking shop!  Basically, “what’s there for a nice retiree like me to do in a place like this?”

Trust me on this, read a few newsletters, peruse a few brochures and bulletin boards, meet a few new people and you will be amazed to discover exactly what goes on in your neighbourhood at two o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon! It’s positively indecent!