noun
1. the action or fact of leaving one's job and ceasing to work.
"a man nearing retirement"
2. the withdrawal of a jury from the courtroom to decide their verdict.
(Thank you, Google!)
As I said several weeks ago, the General Manager of the hotel where I worked told me I needed to look up the definition of that word because I didn’t seem to know what it actually meant.
He was right of course, because I was putting in more than 40 hours a week working on the rescue mission I’ve talked about. I was working more hours than before I “retired” and I was often in the office nights and weekends as I tackled the backlog of work.
A couple months ago I noted that I had returned to working from home, letting the new boss assume his place in the Big Chair. It was the right decision. He needed to be in charge, and no matter how much I agreed with that there was still the “too many chiefs” problem whether I intended it or not.
There was a period of transition when I returned to my home office, and that worked fine for a few weeks, but eventually we reached a point where changes needed to be made (this is a recurring theme, isn’t it?), the jury returned with their verdict and I am now firmly, officially, and completely retired.
There's still only one spot at the top, and I had to make room for the new boss.
In some ways this change was actually more difficult that my original decision to retire. We didn’t plan it, didn’t spend months building up to it, didn’t arrange our lives to accommodate the change. It was abrupt, even a bit unexpected – I had mentally set myself a deadline about a month later and the sudden change was unsettling.
This is, I think, a problem that many other people may be facing in the aftermath of the past year. Jobs – careers – that were an anchor for our lives and our definitions of ourselves have been ripped from the seabed and we are adrift in a storm.
In the past retirement was something you planned for. You prepared your finances, readied your residence, alerted your employer, discussed plans with your family, and arranged to live your post-retirement life in the best way possible.
In short, you anticipated your retirement.
Like the sunset, retirement appears on the horizon and we can anticipate its arrival.
But in the last year, in the face of a pandemic that shut down workplaces and curtailed activities, jobs changed dramatically. Some jobs disappeared and won’t return.
Some people will find other jobs, some will strike out on their own, some will enter the “gig economy” as a way to supplement savings or unemployment, and some will choose to retire.
Or they will have retirement forced upon them.
I kind of feel like I am – strangely – in that last category. The change was not completely unexpected, I had planned to leave in another month or so, but the abrupt decision was still unsettling – and that was for someone who wanted to be retired and planned to be retired.
I can only imagine how distressing it could be for someone who was unprepared for that disruption, especially when piled on top of an already-tumultuous life upended by a global health crisis.
I don’t have a magic formula for making this better. I can’t pretend that I do. I have a raft of my own anxieties, and demons that creep out in the middle of the night and taunt me. I think most of us do.
But what I can say is that after the initial shock to the system I started re-adjusting and am beginning to relax into my new status. For me, because I was already looking ahead, I expect the transition will be faster than for others.
I know it won’t happen all at once, but it will happen. Just as we will find a new status quo as the pandemic threat lessens. It won’t be “normal” in any way we have defined it in the past, but it will be a new equilibrium point and we will find our balance.
For those of you who are facing one of these sudden and unexpected changes I offer my sympathy and sincere best wishes that you will find the new balance point for your life. I hope the change allows you to re-define yourself for yourself, and to find the creativity that brings you joy.
Your point of balance will be different from mine, and from that of everyone else. But it will be yours, it will be in balance. and I hope it will bring you peace and joy.
One thing that is helping me is planning the long-delayed road trip that was supposed to happen as soon as I retired. (Could I have chosen a WORSE date than 2/15/20? Probably not!)
I will do my best to keep everything running smoothly here, but we expect to be on the road for five or six weeks, making an overdue visit to family on the other side of the country. We still don’t want to fly, so we will be driving and with luck we will have adventures along that we can share with you. We hope that those adventures do not include connectivity issues, but there are no guarantees. I hope you will all bear with us if there are scheduling issues along the way.
Also, stay tuned here for some new features. We are experimenting with audio broadcasts, and I am getting ready to assemble ebook and print versions of the first fifty columns, which will be available later this year.