An article by Jill Smolowe in Next Avenue posed the question:
“Do we slow down because we retire? Or do we retire because we slow down?”
Ms. Smolowe described her life in “retirement” and it sounded like anything but retiring. She described her current life as consisting of volunteer work, exercise, meditation, getting together with friends, creative outlets, a lot of reading, contract work of her choosing and a puppy.
Frankly, I was exhausted after reading about it.
While she allowed that some days she felt “drained” after half the amount of hours she used to work, she asked: “As I near 64, I look with a mix of wonder and bewilderment at the politicians, judges and entertainers who are more than a decade older than I and going full-tilt at their careers. Where do they get their energy? Are they aberrations? Or do their demanding jobs keep them young?”
As I creep slowly towards retirement I spend more time contemplating my post-work life. One of the traps I’m trying to avoid but am guilty of occasionally falling into (and maybe Ms. Smolowe is as well?) is looking at other people’s retirements as benchmarks for mine.
Create Your Own Retirement Map
Here’s the thing: There’s no universal road map for retirement. I’m not talking about “retirement calculators” that tell you how much money you’ll need when you stop working (usually put forth online by investment firms looking for customers); or what to do to achieve a “productive aging.” It’s not a one-size fits all proposition.
In This Chair Rocks, author Ashton Applewhite wrote,
“Many older Americans are unprepared, both psychologically and financially, for the transition from employee to retiree. Life can get in the way of the best-laid plans. Longer lives complicate matters further, because people are going to have to work longer to pay for them.”
We can’t know what drives other people to continue to work or to stop working. Most of us spend most of our lives working because we have to; mostly to pay for luxuries such as food, shelter and health insurance.
Consider the fact that from age 5 to 65 (or so) there was somewhere you had to be every day. Whether it was school, work, or military service, you had to get up, get dressed and go somewhere (I’m leaving out the people who work from home, which brings up another set of issues). The concept of not having to be someplace with other people gives us a degree of freedom we’ve never had. Most people don’t stop to think about what this means or even how to address it.
And because there is no road map, it’s logical to look around and see how other people do it. The problem with that, is everybody’s circumstances are different. Even if you’re lucky enough not to have to continue to work there are plenty of things to consider: If you have a partner, are they continuing to work? If so, what does this mean to your relationship? Are there things you’ve been putting off until you’re retired? If so, are those things still appealing, or was the fantasy more exciting than the real possibility? Maybe you’re a real leisure lover and are thrilled to spend all your time (reading, golfing, etc., fill in the blank). Or you might be one of those people who is completely spontaneous and is willing to get up every morning and decide what you want to do with your day. Or maybe you miss your work and want to get back to it in some fashion.
The truth is that with the gift of time/freedom, you can take a crack at any approach (given your particular set of circumstances), mix and match and see what works for you.
I have to confess that Ms. Smolowe’s initial question raises the scary specter of entropy: if I don’t have to do anything, will my energy start to wind down like a clock whose battery will run out and whose hands eventually stop moving altogether? I think I need to get ready for a serious self-examination of what I want my life to look like.
Stay tuned.
Image created by Gan Khoon Lay from Noun Project.
