Some people like their work but not their colleagues. Others like their colleagues but not the work. Some get sick and tired of a difficult commute. Most find the structure of the working day a straitjacket some days. Almost everyone hates the moment the alarm goes off in the morning.
These are excellent reasons to retire, and those of my friends who felt this way about their work wake up every day with a glad sense that they don’t have to go to work. That’s fabulous for them.
But I loved my work. I taught English to bright, troubled teens at a private high school. I liked my students, my colleagues, and my boss. Except during blizzards, I didn’t mind the long commute through the hills of western Massachusetts. I spent two nights a week at the school, met with students during Study Hall, and discovered that individual conferences improved their writing much faster. At sixty, I cut down from year-round teaching to the standard nine months from September to June so that I could enjoy the summer breezes with my husband up in Nova Scotia.
Despite all that, I decided that I would retire on my 66th birthday. The school-year schedule gave me a week off here and there, but my husband and I dreamed of spending weeks of the fall or spring (or both) in Europe. And my Social Security would kick it at its “full” amount at age 66. So, in September of 2018, I confirmed that yes, I would be retiring in June, and the school began interviewing for a replacement English teacher. Then I started The Year of Lasts: the last time I would create a slate of fall or spring classes, the last time I would run a faculty meeting, the last time I would file grades, the last time I would sit with a student I was fond of as we rewrote a paragraph together. (But also the last time I would drive to school on a sunny day and think wistfully of what a perfect day it would be for a hike.)
In March, I made a list of Things That Needed to Be Done. I needed to sort through my books and pack up the ones I wanted to keep. I needed to sift through six big file-boxes of teaching files – over twenty years of teaching files – and decide what I might use again. I needed to organize my Dean of Faculty notes into some form that my successor could make sense of. I needed to have goodbye lunches with people.
And I needed to keep track of what I was feeling. So I journaled a lot about my fears and worries. I flailed around for a few weeks, feeling my brain shut down every time I tried to write about retiring. I kept envisioning those scenes in About Schmidt, as Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) sits in his boxed-up office on his last day of work, watching the clock creep up to 5 p.m. Worse, I’d see that cringe-making scene when he tries to come back and give advice to his successor, only to be brushed off with hearty, dismissive civility. (I resolved not to do that.)
About week before my last day, I finally got some clarity. Here’s what I wrote:
For some reason, I’m calming down about it. Maybe it’s the concrete activity of packing up my office. Maybe it’s the chorus of voices of people who’ve already retired and think it’s great: more time for exercise, for reading, for friends, for slow mornings. I woke up this morning thinking that it’s time (i.e., I have the mental energy) to reframe this as an ADVENTURE. As with any adventure, there will be moments that are memorable successes and moments that suck.
It’s just a new stage of life. I will have ups and downs trying to adjust. Some days it will probably feel blissful to take things slowly; some days I’ll probably drift around like a discontented ghost. Work has pushed me – or often lured me – into action, and I’ve been afraid that I’ll collapse into an amoeba-like blob without that external structure. And because I light up in the classroom, I’ve been afraid that my life will be (and feel) drab without that spark.
Those are reasonable concerns given my personality. So I’ll address them in the weeks ahead. The thing for me to remember is that I am not helpless before my own tendencies. I can experiment and figure it out. I did that with adolescence (such an embarrassing time to think back on), marriage (one long, difficult mistake), career goals (one perfectly natural mistake), and even novel-writing (no mistakes, exactly – just a pattern of giving into the Slough of Despond and a long, long learning curve). I have always made mistakes before I figured out what I want and need. Most people do; we humans learn by trial and error. Why have I been expecting retirement to be any different?
So – stopping work won’t be life-transforming. Sumus quod sumus– we are what we are. The gates of heaven will not open; the angels will not sing. Neither will I become a couch potato who spends twelve hours every day eating potato chips in front of the television. I will be myself, retired.
That day, some peace crept over me. Intellectually, I probably could have written those same thoughts months earlier. But if I’d written them then, I wouldn’t yet have meant them, emotionally. That day, finally, I worked my way through to an attitude that felt balanced and realistic. I could breathe freely again.
Not that I’ve stayed there, of course….
Hi Nancy! I’m not yet fully retired…or at least willing to say I am! I consider myself to be “semi-retired.” But I so appreciate the statement, ” we humans learn by trial and error. Why have I been expecting retirement to be any different?” I also really like it when you said, “I will be myself, retired.” Isn’t that the truth. Like it or not, where ever we go, there we are. I’m just getting started reading your back posts but already I think we have a lot in common. ~Kathy
Thanks, Kathy! I think we do approach the world in lots of similar ways. Certainly I’ve been enjoying your blog posts — and your book on retirement, too. (There will be a blog post before too long reviewing some of the available books on retirement, including yours — plus a later post on books aimed at women and another on books focused on retiring overseas.) I’ve particularly appreciated your annual list of blog sites on retiring and positive aging — what a lovely thing to do for the community!
One edit—2 marriages, only one a long difficult mistake…
Ok, on to the Adventure part!
Yes, so true! I was cataloging my mistakes there, without realizing that it might sound as though I were still single! My first marriage was definitely the biggest of my mistakes. (A very natural mistake for me, maybe even an inevitable one, and one that taught me lots about myself. But still a mistake.) My second marriage is the delicious, fabulous, lucky reward for having done a lot of therapeutic work. Thanks for clearing that up!