The Haircut That Finally Made Retirement Feel Real
Ordinary Tuesdays
Observations from everyday life. The small moments, familiar places, chance conversations, and ordinary experiences that quietly reveal something larger.
I don’t know how it is with men and their barbers, but when women find a stylist or salon they love, we rarely go anywhere else. Relax, this isn’t a story about how I cheated on my hairdresser. It’s something much less dramatic, and so much more revealing.
I have been going to Three Small Rooms for 26 years. And like all smart business owners, Suzanne’s staff always ask their customers if they’d like to book their next appointment while paying.
And I never could. My response was always, “no thank you,” for literally a quarter of a century – no thank you.
It wasn’t because I didn’t want another appointment. It was because I never knew if I’d be able to keep it. I worked in emergency services, where “shit happens” wasn’t just an expression; it was how the job worked. Scheduling something weeks in advance often meant cancelling it later.
Then in August of 2021, she asked me again.
This time I stopped.
It had nothing to do with checking my calendar. I didn’t even reach for my phone. I simply found myself wondering whether there was any reason that I couldn’t just…say yes.
There wasn’t. Was there? There wasn’t.
“Yes, please.”
Then I walked out to my car, closed the door, and just sat there.
I didn’t start the engine for at least a minute.
This wasn’t about the next haircut.
Or even the next appointment.
It was the almost physical reaction to the fact that my calendar was finally my own, virtually unconstrained.
Had I actually really thought scheduling around work as a constraint? Had it become a habit so ingrained that it had simply become the way life worked?
It took one of those ordinary Tuesday moments, while booking a haircut, to realize one of those invisible fences had quietly disappeared.
For years, I’d organized my life around work. I hadn’t realized how much I’d also been organizing my healthcare, my vacations, and even something as ordinary as a haircut around it too.
Yes, retirement feels real, and this was my aha moment.
Related Reading
If you enjoy following ordinary observations that turn into bigger questions, you might also like:
- Retirement Transition: The Science Behind Why It Feels Harder Than Expected
- Second Adulthood
- Things To Do Before You Retire
Research Note
The observations in this article are informed by ongoing reading and research in psychology, sociology, adult development, aging, friendship, purpose, identity, and life transitions. While these essays are observational rather than academic, many of the underlying ideas are grounded in established research.
- William Bridges, Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes
Cynthia Ross Tustin is the founder of I'm Thinking of Retiring, an online publication exploring the psychology, purpose, and everyday realities of life after work. A retired Fire Chief, former ICU and Emergency Room nurse, instructor, and policy writer, she combines lived experience, research, and a lifelong curiosity about human behaviour to write thoughtful essays on retirement, identity, purpose, friendship, and the ordinary moments that quietly reveal something larger. Through her Retirement Field Notes and Ordinary Tuesday series, she encourages readers to approach this next chapter with curiosity rather than certainty.
