Some thoughts on retirement

The question I get, having given up my last paying job about 10 months ago, is along the lines of "How are you liking retirement?" or "What are you doing now that you're retired?"

I have no final answer to those questions as my retirement routine is still evolving. I am liking many aspects of this stage of life. I am staying busy with projects and routine chores around the house along with some writing. My greatest revelation about retirement is that I sleep better. I had been accustomed, over a 33-year career in the newspaper business, 10 years managing nonprofit agencies and three years in the military, to waking in the middle of the night in a sudden panic and then lying awake for hours worrying about some issue at the office.

I still awaken in the night occasionally, but only rarely now in a panic over work issues. I am sleeping better than I have in many years. Credit a lack of occupational worries and pressure. It has been years since I had the recurring nightmare of being in a college classroom and realizing I had not studied for or even read the material for a big exam.

Retirement has not been as productive or as enjoyable as I had hoped. The routine responsibilities still burden me — maintaining the house and yard, paying the bills, exercising regularly, making plans for family visits, etc. I have more time now to do these things, and I have to keep reminding myself that I don't have to wait until the weekend to tackle looming chores. I have the time to mow the lawn, to make medical appointments, to read, to write, to volunteer all week long. We have several bookcases full of books I have not read or want to re-read.

What I am missing is my wife's presence. She is still working, her retirement still months away. All our visions of retirement had involved the two of us doing things together — traveling, visiting family and old friends, working together on household projects. I will not feel fully retired until my companion for the past 47 years can share this time with me.

I have become closer to our dog, an old rescue we adopted about five years ago and who is showing his age. I walk him every day (weather permitting), and, as I've often said, he's the only person I have to talk to during the day.

I've taken on a few editing projects and occasionally (too infrequently) contribute some words to this blog. I've reworked novels I had initially written 10 years ago, but I've not found a publisher for any of them and, frankly, have not tried very hard to find a publisher.

As agreeable as retirement is, I am often reminded that the mortality clock is ticking, and I have, realistically, only 15-20 years (if that) remaining in this life to do all the things I have not done but wanted to do in the first 69 years. It's a sobering thought but not one that has thus far pressed me into expediency. I'll get to the bucket list items that I can, and any remainders won't matter in the end.

Each day, we will celebrate our gratitude for the life we've been granted, for the children, the grandchildren, the siblings and parents and friends who have shaped our lives. Despite all the disappointments, sorrows and tragedies we've experienced over seven decades, we are blessed beyond measure and are grateful for every moment.

A lifetime of work remembered

A brief encounter with an acquaintance who asked what I had been doing lately led me to recount in my mind what I had been doing since I graduated college and was truly on my own 43 years ago this month. Here's the recounting I came up with:
    • Four years waiting to join or being on active duty with the U.S. Coast Guard;
    • 33 years as a newspaper editor at three newspapers (not counting summer jobs and brief assignments or consultations with other newspapers);
    • One year unemployed after being laid off from a newspaper job I'd held for 29 years;
    • Almost three years with the American Red Cross;
    • Almost two years with Habitat for Humanity.

The total comes to 43 years of my working life. You can add to that two summers as an intern at two newspapers, a year as a college resident adviser, four years (plus one summer session) as a full-time student; half a summer as a part-time college laboratory aide; half a summer as a concrete plant laborer; a summer as a textile mill laborer/go-fer; a summer as an automobile parts warehouse supply clerk; department store sales clerk for several months; more part-time work as a department store sales clerk; less than a year as a 17-year-old school bus driver.

Add it all up, and you come up with the tally that the Social Security Administration provides, listing my total earnings for each year since 1964. Some of those total annual earnings are embarrassingly small; some are so large that I have trouble remembering that I made that much (part of it in an annual bonus). In the end, this recounting amounts to nothing, for I am not the sum total of my labor. I have worked to live (and to provide for my family); I have not lived to work.

This recounting reminds me of the ancient wisdom of Ecclesiastes:

What do people gain from all their labors
    at which they toil under the sun?
⁴ Generations come and generations go,
    but the earth remains forever.
⁵ The sun rises and the sun sets,
    and hurries back to where it rises.