I haven’t
worked for ten months and I can now say, “I am retired.” Not proudly, sorta of
softly.
I am
starting to think like a retired[1] person, not an infirm person forced
by medical issues to stop working. What does that mean?
It means the
appointments with doctors have dried up. They have lost interest in me. My
appointment book is devoid of appointments to visit and discuss my health with people
who don’t care about me and people I care passionately about. Day after day of
nothing planned. No visits to doctors or hospitals or physiotherapists or
psychologists or pathology labs or radiology departments or ….
So I am no
longer sick. Or ill. Well what am I? The answer would be, “I am retired”.
Well what is
that like? What is it like to be retired? What does this stage involve?
Well it is a
common experience. I personally know many people who have retired. I can say it
is never the way expected. Everybody thinks about it before it arrives. Everybody has a tentative plan. When it actually happens it is never the way
it was envisioned. Your life will change in unexpected and unpredicted
ways. It will be different. To the
people heading towards retirement I say, “Keep an open mind. Stay flexible.
Welcome change. Change is not good or bad.”
In
retirement what have I found? I have found a lack of purpose or a lack of
meaning. I have found that I need goals.
Something to aim for. My work used to supply me with all these goals. Give me
something to think about. Something to contemplate. That’s now gone. Now I have
to invent or make up and tell myself my goals. I then have to write them down.
Before
writing down my goals I need to work out what my goals are. To do this I need to
get to know myself. For so long my personality was related to my work. You
couldn’t separate me from my work. I was a dentist. I need to know myself which means finding out
what I am if you take my job away. I
need to find myself and then I can find out my goals. I have entered a new land. The infinite land.
The land that stretches forever in all directions. The land full of limitless
possibilities. To know myself is
obviously more difficult and terrifying but also potentially more exciting and
wondrous.
In
retirement another issue is the lack of rewards for achieving anything. I need
to find a way to reward myself for achieving things. The rewards have to come from myself and they
have to relate to my goals and interests.
My main goals/interests have turned out to be physical. Tennis, running,
swimming. My rewards have to relate to my goals which have to follow from
finding myself.
Another
thing I have found in retirement is a lack of pride/confidence. One day I was
owning, running, working in a dental practice in the center of Hobart. The signs
outside displayed my name to the world. I had constant daily feedback telling
me that I existed. The feedback may have been positive or negative but it all
related to what I had done. It was always about me. Now nothing. I now do many
things which are un-noticed. Things which don’t result in any feedback. Perhaps
my problem is I was so high before. I was in a job where I was unavoidably the
one. The boss. Now I am not the one. Other people spend their whole lives where
I am now. I just have to get used to it. Stop complaining and get on with it.
In
retirement another issue is the days of the week change. When working you often
have 5 days of work followed by 2 days of weekend rest to get ready for the
next week of work. When retired you
cannot divide your week into working days and resting days. Every day is the
same. What can I do?
Well I am
doing things I do not get paid for. I can define everything I do as neither
work nor rest Things unrelated to money. Things I enjoy doing. It is a great
feeling to have. I do what I want to.
And I am
making myself sound unbelievable selfish. I am a person who only ever does what
I want to. How selfish is that? The reality is I do lots of things I would
rather not. Things that involve fitting in with other people. Because it’s
expected. I like the idea that every day contains various activities. Some are
completely my choice; some are other people’s choices; some involve planning
and preparation; some just happen spontaneously.
Once I did
think that when I retired I would do voluntary work. I would join an
organization and help people. I can now see that this would have given me goals;
a purpose and reaffirmed my worth. It would have constantly told me that I was
important and needed. For some reason I see voluntary work as a solution that
doesn’t attract me though I am sure I will from time to time do things which
could be considered as voluntary work.
And the biggest
issue in my retirement. Is deciding when to shave. I can’t get it right. When
working I used to shave every day. Now I can’t develop a habit of
shaving every day. I only have to shave when I have to. I wait 2/3 days ; the stubble irritates me and then I
try to shave. It hurts and is difficult.
Is a beard the solution? I don’t think so. It would change my appearance
and irritate me.
And now
whenever I see someone with a few days growth, I know. I know he is either
pretending to be Yasser Arafat or he is retired and doesn’t know when to shave.
[1] I don’t like the word retired. It
suggests that work is my life and that I had period studying, preparing for
work and a period after work when I am not working. I prefer to say I have now
entered the next period of my life. It is not inferior to working. It is
different. It is the third/fourth stage of life. It is not more important or
less important than other stages. It is just different. In this post I have
from time to time used the word retired. I do not like using the word but
people understand it and at times it is easy to just use the word.
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