As I said in my first Dispatch this month, I have once again begun giving away my time. Lots of time. No, not the few hours of volunteering I'm doing in the wake of the wildfires, but large chunks of time, day after day.
Can you guess what happened?
Yes, I went back to work.
No, it is not permanent.
I made a decision to help my former employer through a rough patch with some specific projects, knowing it would affect my creativity. It would take time away from my writing, from this page, and from my family.
I chose to give away my time.
As I said in the introduction to the last Dispatch, I am getting paid. Not at the consultant rates that I might be able to command elsewhere, but above my previous wage. It's still cheaper for my old employer since they don't have to provide medical insurance now that I'm on Medicare, but I'm not working for free.
When I retired in February I knew questions would arise from time to time. After all I had been there nearly 21 years, and my boss for all those years had retired the previous May after more than 25 years. In a department with only three full-time and two part-time employees, that's a lot of experience and institutional knowledge to lose in just a few months.
What we didn't anticipate was just how many questions there would be, and how much help our replacements would need.
My now-retired boss lives 70 miles away, and isn't readily available. I'm two miles away, and my replacement happens to be a close friend starting a new career in accounting. I promised to do whatever I could to make his first job in this new field a success.
That promise is a big part of why I am back at work.
The new boss has had some issues adjusting to the unique aspects of the position, and as a result some annual processes got delayed. My friend tried to help, but he's new to this and it was wearing him down.
They needed help.
After an appeal from the boss's boss, I set some ground rules, threw out an hourly number, and agreed to help - as long as I could work from home. There was no way I was going into an open hotel in the middle of a pandemic (well, except for that whole One-If-By-Land evacuation thing I wrote about earlier this week).
The reasons I made this choice are complicated, and I have fallen victim to some emotional appeals, the lure of a cash infusion for my retirement fund, and the temptations of my own ego.
Some of these may be good and valid reasons, and some may not be. But I am going to lay them out and let you see how easy it is to get sucked back in, especially when you're stuck in quarantine and bored senseless.
Warning number one: Don't do something just because you're bored. Yes, do something if you're bored, but do something you love, something you want to do, something that makes you happy.
Warning number two: Don't do it just for the money - unless money is critical, and that's a much bigger issue. Don't get me wrong, money is a great thing, and I am sure we would all like to have more of it. But if money alone is enough to force you back into a regular job, you probably aren't really ready to retire.
Warning number three: Don't do it out of obligation. You may certainly feel loyalty to your old job, or to the people you worked with, or for. When a problem arises there is often the desire to "fix" whatever it is. You know this, you tell yourself. You can take care of it in no time, and everything will be better. And it will. Until the next time. Unfortunately, unless the situation is beyond anyone's control and is truly a once-in-a-lifetime crisis, all you are doing is delaying the inevitable.
Warning number four: Don't settle for the first offer you get. You can dismiss all the other warnings (including the next one) and go ahead with your rescue mission anyway. But if you do you certainly deserve the respect and gratitude of your employer-and that should be reflected in the form of your compensation. You are doing them a favor, and you shouldn't sell yourself short. After all, you are giving up the time you worked for, the time you wanted for your creative pursuits, and you deserve to be compensated for that sacrifice.
Warning number five: Don't let your ego overrule your good sense. This may be the toughest lesson to learn. You know you can do the job, and probably far better than the person who replaced you. Years of experience, years those of us who have reached retirement age certainly have, give you the ability to perform quickly and efficiently. If your old job needs you back they are going to remind you how great you are, how well you can do the job, how much they need you. That appeal to your ego, that flattery (no matter how true or well-deserved) can have you saying "Yes" when you really want to say "No."
The truth is, I have fallen for every one of these reasons. With the current pandemic I am stuck at home. It's a safety issue for everyone, but we can't ignore the fact that we are a high risk group due to our age. That isolation manifests in many ways, and boredom is a big one. I told myself I wasn't going anywhere anyway, I might as well work, and get paid for it. Like I said above, we all would like a little more money. At least I managed to get a bit more money than I was initially offered, and I successfully requested my seniority and benefit accruals be restored.
That covers one, two, and four.
Three and five are trickier because they are emotional hooks that reach deep into our self-image and our self-esteem. It's the same impulse that caused Sally Field to blurt, "Right now, you like me!" It's validation that you are the expert at something, they you have valuable skills and knowledge. That you are capable and valued.
That is hard to resist.
We all want to think we matter. We want to think of ourselves as "good" people, and good people help each other. Good people are givers, helpers, kind and generous with their time and talents. Good people put others before themselves.
Try telling your self-image that you can still be a good person even if you say no when someone asks for help. Especially when it's someone you consider a friend-and if you've been in a job for any length of time you often consider your co-workers to be friends.
So, I am back to work. I can tell you the boredom didn't last, but I don't think it would have anyway. I have plenty of other things to do, even if I am stuck at home.
The money is nice, and it's padded my bank account, but it's a windfall, not an income stream and I have to treat it that way
Obligation and loyalty are big ones for me. I feel as though I didn't prepare my replacements as well as I should have, and that I bear some responsibility for their shortcomings. This is a second chance for me to do a better job of setting them up for success rather than failure.
I did set the terms for my return, including a guarantee that I would only work from home. Yeah, I said staying home contributed to my boredom, but it also isolated me from exposure to strangers and potential illness.
Ego? That's still tough. I know when I relinquish my current authority I will feel some regret. I can't deny there is gratification in being the white knight riding to the rescue.
But after just a few weeks of long hours I remember why I chose to retire. I look around at the projects that are languishing because my energy and attention are elsewhere. I spend hours at the computer working for someone else and my back and hands and eyes don't want to go back to the computer for a writing session afterward.
Honestly, I am counting the days until I can retire again. And I will come back and re-read this the next time I think it might be a good idea to interrupt my retirement and my creativity. Because it really isn't.