Some days are just blah. If they were a color, they would be beige. 

My current routine is simple: get up, walk the dog, go to work—where I mostly just watch the news and finance pages—go home, eat a half-hearted meal, walk the dog, and veg on the couch. Then I get up the next day and do it all again.

When my work is blah, everything else outside of work is, too. It’s the opposite of Spinal Tap turning life up to 11; it turns my life down to a negative 1. Nothing in the day feels totally fulfilling. This worries me. Is it caused by work, or is it just my nature—waiting for something to happen, waiting for someone else to lead? Am I, for all intents and purposes, the reason for the blah?

leading the band with it turned all the way up to -1

This cycle makes me question whether work is a good thing or a bad thing. Is it merely filling a hole? Will removing work simply backfill that time with more blah? Maybe having no work will amplify the beige, making life “beig-i-er,” if that makes sense. Or maybe, removing work will force me to find ways to change up my life and make it more alive. There’s no way to know, and that scares me.

I listen to a few podcasts—okay, too many—and you hear the retirees talk about their days. They get up, put on a pot of coffee, read the news, and think about what to do with the day. This takes them to lunch.

For me, on a normal day, I’m done by 9:30 a.m. I’m usually up by 6. I’ve read what I’m going to read, had my three cups of tea, played my mindless video game, and walked the dog. Then it’s just a matter of getting the rest of the day going.

I know I’ll need to stretch this out. I could easily commit to exercising before noon, which would fill my morning. I admit that part sounds nice. There’s a catch, though: I need something to do in the afternoon that isn’t by myself. The afternoon has to involve a person or people. That social component is the little bit I get from work right now.

If the afternoon mirrors the morning, the blah will return. It will likely be even stronger because there will be less social interaction. Padme would be kicking my butt to get out of the house; even the dog would probably ask me to go away so he could sleep.

The Real Kicker: The Need for People

So maybe this is the kicker, the root cause of what I need: people. I need to be social and forge deeper relationships than what work provides. I always thought I was an introvert, but going through remote work and the pandemic, I now crave interaction. Not just what I call “surface layer” connection—not just an inch deep—but a foot deep with a few close relationships.

Life feels blah right now because there hasn’t been any real engagement with people I like at work lately. With Padme and me on different work travel schedules this past month, my life has been largely devoid of my preferred social connections. Even though I’ve been traveling almost 50 percent of the time, life has still felt beige. There were some good times this month, so maybe the contrast is what’s making the normal days feel less fun.

This cycle has put me in a blah mood, which is only reinforced by slow or uninteresting work. To break the cycle, I need to see more people of my choosing, and that needs to include new people. I need to commit to booking three or four social outings per week and focus on being present, being more open, and being “less guyish.”

There’s one complication here for me: the people I form good friendships with are typically women. It’s easier to be open and vulnerable with female friends. This isn’t something I do well with guy friends, and it’s a skill I need to improve. With more time on my hands as a future retiree, primarily hanging out only with women for my friendships probably isn’t the best long-term strategy. Honestly, even writing that looks weird.

For me, the antidote to beige is not time off, but connection. My first step is to find a tribe I can hang out with. To interact with.  Maybe money nerds?

It’s likely time to book my first CampFI event. To find my tribe