Category Archives: Retirement

Should You Keep Social Media After Retirement?

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One aspect of retirement that I never considered was how it would affect my profile on social media.

Nearly a year after leaving the last of my two part-time jobs, now working a contract gig that averages only 20 hours a month, I’m not sure I see the point in continuing to create and curate an online profile. At least not on a professionally oriented site like LinkedIn.

This is no small decision for a careerist who’s held public-facing positions.

I’ve been active on Facebook for years (true to my Boomer demographic) and a more occasional presence on LinkedIn and Twitter, pre–Elon Musk. Nine years ago — at the urging of young adults at work — I began toe-dipping into Instagram, which I had written off as a visual playground for photos of food, pets and sunsets.

Now that I no longer have professional contacts to impress, or any particular public image to maintain, is keeping up with social media still worth my time? To answer that question, I’ve come up with a set of criteria to evaluate whether I will retain any of these platforms at age 69, with my full-time, full-bore career four years behind me.

LinkedIn logo
Instagram

The following considerations will help me decide:

  • Can I be my whole self on this platform? This is important given the 21 years I spent as a communications professional for private colleges and universities, when any social media musings — even with the disclaimer that “posts are my own” — potentially reflected on the institution and once got me into deep trouble with my employer.
  • Do I enjoy and learn from other people’s content? This has become an issue for me in the progressive echo chamber that is Bluesky, where I silenced myself in declaring preferences for mayoral candidates in the Twin Cities, for example, because my views seemed more centrist and nuanced than the people I am following. Given the acerbic tone on Bluesky, I pause as I review political or policy discussions — the latest being the Democratic U.S. Senate race in Minnesota between Peggy Flanagan and Angie Craig — and ask myself: Are pissy exchanges with strangers worth this much emotional energy?
  • Does this feel like a creative outlet or an obligation? I posted a reel on Instagram the other day for the first time since late March after my weekly volunteer shift at a local food shelf. It gave me a little thrill, and I was proud of the message (“just show up”). But given that my first post on Instagram was in March 2017, and I’ve posted only 125 times since then, I am unlikely to become an influencer or even attract many followers beyond my friends and family.

Cutting the cord, deleting the accounts, wiping the slate clean just feels so . . . final. Like a concession to being old and out of touch. It’s the digital equivalent of burning journals — and eliminating a piece of my history that once felt important.

This is where the three criteria are going to help me.

News source or entertainment?

I’d never thought of Instagram as a news site until Trump’s ICE agents invaded Minnesota last January, detaining and assaulting immigrants and other people of color and killing two white citizens on the street in broad daylight. The horror, the family separations, the economic impacts of that brutality will never leave our collective consciousness.

Amid it all, as I used the newspaper and public radio and neighborhood Signal chats to follow the violence and resistance, I noticed that my older son in London, then 35, seemed to have a better handle on the goings-on than I did.

Younger people are more likely to be regular news consumers on TikTok, Instagram, Reddit and X. Democrats are also more likely than Republicans to say they get news from Instagram.

Pew Research Center, September 25, 2025

“This ICE stuff in the Cities is insane,” he wrote me on WhatsApp on January 17, 2026, a week before agents murdered Alex Pretti. “I’m seeing at least 3–4 new videos every day of something horrible. Two people have been shot, one kid permanently blinded. Shot from point blank with a pepper ball and dragged away by his collar.”

When I asked Sam about his news source, he replied instantly: Instagram. “Everyone is recording and posting everything,” he said. And then he directed me to Unicorn Riot, from which algorithms eventually led me to all kinds of local heroes and local news — on the ground, unfiltered, in real time.

Instagram is the social media site where I am learning the most from other people’s posts and reels. Where I think less about cultivating a “professional” persona and feel most free to get creative with what I want to present, as I did in the first reel I posted, during the ICE invasion.

  • My reasons for staying? Instagram checks all three of my boxes: whole self, creativity and education. News source or entertainment? I like that Instagram is both.

You’re my Bluesky . . . or not

I joined Bluesky by invitation — the only way to get on the platform initially — in September 2023. I was managing editor of Streets.mn, a community-oriented online magazine in the Twin Cities, and up until that time, Twitter had been my go-to platform to build sources and follow trends among the multimodal advocates, urban planners, city zoning experts and climate activists — the self-described “urbanists” — who were far younger than I was.

My Twitter profile, which dated back to 2008, had a photo of my dogs, a description of me as both an employee and a volunteer, and lots of posts about women’s basketball, reproductive rights and local politics. The platform felt more entrepreneurial and less polished and performative than Facebook, and I responded in kind.

Elon Musk changed that. Once the billionaire took over Twitter in October 2022, eventually rebranding it to X with a foreboding black background, the left-leaning regulars already were abandoning it. Progressives started migrating to Bluesky in February 2023, when the platform was being beta-tested as an invitation-only app and a year after Bluesky — which started as a Twitter initiative back in 2019 — had officially spun off from X.

By late 2024, when Bluesky was fully open to the public, major media like Forbes and CBS News were covering people’s exodus from Twitter. I had no interest in associating myself with Musk or the second Trump regime, but the larger reason why I quit posting to X in November 2024 (though I have maintained my account, for posterity, I suppose) was that I didn’t want my Streets.mn sources and writers to think I was out of touch.

In true social media style, I had an image to maintain, in this case as the still “with it” older woman.

Truth is, since resigning from the editorial position, I have struggled to discover who I am on Bluesky. I was there in a role, as an editor who made connections because it served my job. Now the task is to shape and share my own identity. But I don’t find the platform receptive to who I am.

My blog posts on mindful aging generate little engagement, and the one time I tried to reveal myself — describing my despair when thieves ransacked my well-tended Little Free Library — one commenter shrugged: “I thought that’s what Little Free Libraries are for.”

Conservative columnist George Will recently described a progressive politician as being “fluent in the online snark and condescension that clog social media.” Though I take issue with Will on any number of issues, I do agree with those who’ve criticized Bluesky as a “monoculture” that neither invites nor elevates dissenting views.

  • Using my own criteria, what are the reasons for staying? I can’t think of any. I rarely bother to post anymore.

The last ‘Link’ to professionalism?

I recently revised my résumé from four single-spaced pages to a single sheet that emphasizes volunteering, family and personal interests, names me as retired and focuses on the attributes (“well organized, high energy, community minded”) that I hope will land me a part-time job, at some point, at a neighborhood business.

The résumé does list my LinkedIn profile, which these days showcases my blog and freelance writing and the publication I write and edit for the Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota. So, that’s reason enough to keep the account active, even though I’ve posted only six times this year and the “impressions” for each post have been diminishing.

LinkedIn allows professionals, including the middle class, to invest in themselves in order to find the right jobs.

Democratic mega-donor and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman

LinkedIn takes hits for being inauthentic, promoting “humble bragging” and trading in “personal brand growth.” I use it as a professional bulletin board and an online space that feels safe. Because it’s meant for career-building, LinkedIn has a decorum that appeals to my understanding of what constructive dialogue and “good manners” means.

Several of my retired peers have kept their LinkedIn pages, though they rarely post. “I wanted people to know I retired,” says one, “and I don’t see any harm in keeping it. Today it told me my cousin has a new job, and I wouldn’t have known without LinkedIn. It’s interesting to see what people are up to.”

Another friend laughs that her LinkedIn page is “deep in cobwebs. I don’t even remember my password at this point.” I’ve worked in the field of information currency and communications for too long to keep a site active that I never look at or maintain.

  • Reason for staying? That’s a fourth criterion. Because for now, at least, it serves me.

Retirement Offers Opportunities for Giving Back

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­April is National Volunteer Month, a chance for people to celebrate and explore community involvement and engagement. For those of us born and raised in Minnesota, it’s a given that this liberal oasis of the Upper Midwest — the state with the most progressive politics, consistently high voter turnout and a nation-leading Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund — would also rank highly in volunteerism.

According to Minnesota Compass, a nonprofit affiliate that provides “credible, easy-to-access data” about the state:

  • 42.4 percent of Minnesotans age 16 and older volunteer, placing us behind only Utah and Vermont and outranking neighboring South Dakota by 1.3 percentage points, Iowa by over 5 points and Wisconsin by 11 points (though the Dairy State bests Minnesota in voter turnout).
  • Fundraising and food collection top our volunteer activities, followed by clothing distribution, providing transportation, youth mentoring, and tutoring or teaching.
  • And here’s one from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: On any given day, adults (especially women) age 65 and older are far more likely to volunteer than older teens or young to middle-aged adults. No surprise: We have the gift of time!

At this stage of life — post-career, my parents gone, my two sons launched and thriving — working for a cause rather than a paycheck has become more possible and palatable. “Never give away your time for something you can get paid for,” an attorney once told me as he was setting up a consulting business toward the end of his career. In short, don’t write and edit for free if you can land contract work or freelance gigs.

But that dictum matters less to me now that I’m retired. In fact, one motivation for volunteering since I left full- and part-time employment is to make use of the professional skills that I honed for decades. Having the luxury of less structured time and the opportunity to stay engaged with both peers and younger people are other good reasons for retired Boomers — “the wealthiest generation to have ever lived,” according to the Michigan Journal of Economics — to get out there and give back.

Photo by Elissa Garcia on Unsplash

The Golden Rule of volunteering? Put others first.

What do we owe?

The rewards of a professional, managerial-level career tend to be long term, and realized through your leadership and mentoring of others. Volunteering, by contrast, lets you make a tangible, immediate impact in a two- or three-hour shift.

  • Our clients at the warehouse and food shelf in my neighborhood have to meet federal poverty guidelines to qualify for one monthly visit. I do my best to ensure it’s worth their while. Because of my recent work as a warehouse greeter, people saw a well-stocked display of expensive protein drinks next to the bottled water. And got a shot at fancy popcorn varieties that I hustled onto the floor after opening boxes of donations from Target. And had the chance to take home cans of cat food, which rarely is supplied, and the extra-large jars of peanut butter that always move quickly because each family is entitled to only one jar.
  • The exhausted grandmother who drove a family member from South Dakota to Planned Parenthood North Central States in St. Paul may not have found a bathroom for her restless granddaughters had I not worked an escort shift last week.
  • The woman suffering from a UTI wouldn’t have been shielded from the invasive press of protestors on the city sidewalk outside our building, who assume that every visitor to Planned Parenthood is there for an abortion.
  • The young woman whose face looked drained following her clinic visit would have had no one to wave down her Uber and get the driver to pick her up beyond earshot of the white-haired men and stern, determined women shouting unsolicited advice.

I like to walk, bike or take the bus home from these volunteer gigs, so I have time to reflect on the satisfaction of helping others, with no expectation of payback. I was born into privilege and, more importantly, given the tools — higher education, investment skills and acumen, the modeling of my father’s work ethic — that have allowed me to build and sustain a comfortable life.

Photo by Lina Trochez on Unsplash

“Of whom much is given, much is required” (Luke 12:58). Although I’m not prone to quoting Bible verses, in part because I’m not among the 78% of U.S. seniors who identify as Christian, I do believe that privileged people are obligated to make a difference in their community and the wider world.

And we are: Over half of all volunteers in Minnesota have annual household incomes of at least $75,000 and nearly 47% of volunteers are non-Hispanic whites, a population whose household incomes outstrip those of all races except Asian Americans.

Better now than never

Given the life shift that retirement represents, the benefits to seniors of volunteering are the best argument for getting involved: increase your physical activity, meet new friends, stave off loneliness and isolation, regain a sense of purpose. Indeed, numerous studies seek to prove how volunteering can improve physical and mental health as we grow older.

“I don’t know how I found time to work” is a common refrain among those of us who are recently retired. Just under 40% of volunteers in Minnesota are 65-plus, says the Compass data, placing us fifth among U.S. states for the percentage of older-age volunteers.

I first toe-dipped into authentic volunteering, which I distinguish from job-related community involvement, in January 2018. I signed up online at Planned Parenthood, eager to work on behalf of reproductive freedom — a cause that I consider essential to women’s equality and empowerment.

Soon I was staffing tables at various events and working at phone banks, often to stump for pro-choice legislative candidates. Since retiring, I have upped my activities with Planned Parenthood — helping to pack abortion kits, serving as a clinic escort — even though my reproductive years are over. I want to remain in touch with social issues and riff off the energy of people less than half my age.

Volunteers at the Keystone Community Food Center in St. Paul — which houses a food market, a sizable warehouse and several foodmobile trucks — tend more toward folks like me: white, well-off retirees who are past the demands of full-time careers but physically agile enough to work on our feet and cart around heavy boxes of food and supplies.

Quote by cellist Pablo Casals, on a bridge over Midtown Greenway in Minneapolis.

Some of the causes may affect us older volunteers less directly than they once did, and the outcome of issues like climate change and threats to America’s democratic experiment will harm our children and grandchildren’s generations more than ours. But that speaks to what, I believe, is the most worthy reason to volunteer: to leave the world a better place.

“Your legacy is the world you leave behind for the people you love the most,” says climate activist and Third Act founder Bill McKibben. We proved ourselves up to that challenge in Minnesota during the federal government’s violent occupation earlier this year.

That makes me proud.

How You’ll Know When It’s Time to Let Go

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Ego, irritation and exhaustion are the watchwords of this story — the emotional and physical habits that work against us as we age. TLDR is the cheeky abbreviation for “too long, didn’t read” (yes, I learned that from a Millennial), so if you’re stopping here, try to guard against:

  • Self-importance (the conviction that only you know what’s best).
  • Sanctimoniousness (feeling thwarted when others counter what you believe to be right).
  • Overdoing it (because you believe you can control the outcome).

I want to tamp down these tendencies in the autumn of my life. Quitting work at age 68 may help me do that.


Image by freepik

I have talked about retirement so often in this blog that my friends and family just dismiss me: You love being busy. You’ll never quit working. The first statement is true. The second has changed, which I never anticipated during my decades as a careerist.

At the end of August, after months of hand-wringing and internal debate, I finally left the last of my part-time jobs. I embraced the word “retirement,” even as I struggle still with what it means.

Getting there has been a journey:

  • Three years ago, in September 2022, I resigned from full-time employment after I turned 65 and archly declared that no one should view me as “retired,” given the two part-time positions I’d taken on.
  • Six months later, in March 2023, I described those jobs as a “glidepath” toward retirement and interviewed two peers who were taking similar approaches.
  • A year into the gig work, in September 2023, I described how part-time professional work pulls more on your intellect and energies than a job you leave behind once the shift is over.
  • In July 2024, more than a year before official retirement, I wrote about the decision to draw Social Security at age 67. It was another step closer to the inevitable. And toward acceptance.

Finally, this past February, I gave six months’ notice and developed systems that would make the transition easier for my successor. Here’s how I reconciled my instinctive desire to keep working — despite the privilege of financial security — with the reality that it was time to move on.

The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.

Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist Carl Jung

Once ego takes over

My final job was as managing editor of Streets.mn, an online publication that advocates for “people-centered communities”: bike and pedestrian infrastructure, public transportation, vibrant public spaces and more abundant housing throughout Minnesota. The quarter-time position was the only paid job within the volunteer-based organization. I worked with board members who had full-time responsibilities elsewhere, with unpaid contributors who had little professional writing experience, and with copy editors who were donating their time and had varying degrees of commitment to learning the fine points of AP Style.

The work was rewarding and challenging — a big stretch for a part-time gig, with the responsibility of publishing a new piece of well-reported content every weekday. The board would warn me from time to time that donations were down and cut my hours for several months at the end of 2024. And yet I remained motivated and immensely proud of the work, getting to my computer every workday before 6 a.m. to ensure we met the 7 a.m. publication deadline.

Dedication morphed into ownership as I passed the three-year mark. I thought less about what “we” were accomplishing, together, with this reputable publication and more about how “I” had transformed it into a well-oiled machine.

My successor approaches the role differently and is contributing her own strengths. In the four weeks since I left, I have ceased to check the website every morning and note the copy-editing changes I would have made. (A friend challenged me to stop; just stop.) Time to separate, to let go and, for my own peace of mind, to abandon the notion that my way is the only and obvious answer.

Endings are a little overrated. When the ending is here, it’s here, and you just move forward.

WNBA all-star Diana Taurasi, who retired in 2025 at age 42

Restless, irritable and discontent

My insider joke, more relevant a year ago, was that I didn’t want to become the Joe Biden of Streets.mn — the oldest person in the room at board meetings, writers’ gatherings and readers’ happy hours; the leader who couldn’t accept that she was aging out.

Collaborating with younger people helps keep me mentally fresh. I’ve recognized that since I turned 60. Still, as my quit date got closer, little irritants kept popping up that I could only attribute to a generational divide:

  • A Macalester College student who wrote for us occasionally texted me after our coffee meeting to suggest I use AI editing to reduce my workload — apparently unaware of all the years of experience and mentorship it required for me to get good at this.
  • A guest on a Streets.mn podcast episode declared that “all cops suck” in Minneapolis, and the host agreed, as though it’s a verified fact. I don’t believe that to be true, nor is it my experience with police. But maybe those are the uninformed musings of an older white woman.
  • Though I often told writers that an editor’s job is “to make you look good,” I grew weary of polishing stories that lacked focus or solid reporting. I wondered whether my obsession with word choice, fact-checking and well-crafted sentences was outdated in an era when fewer people read books — or read, period — and when TikTok users see “celebrities” and “influencers” as a legitimate source of news.

A former college professor, a woman whose work was her calling, told me she knew it was time to retire when she got tired of dealing with students. Exactly.

We do best when we learn how to have both work and rest in our lives.

Women Rowing North (2019), by Mary Pipher

The body’s wisdom

I kept notes during the first month of my retirement to track how this life change feels physically and emotionally. I was sick the first few days: stomach problems, little appetite, a newfound love of naps. After consulting WebMD and freaking out at the possibilities, I came to recognize that my malady was pure exhaustion.

I am grateful every day that I enjoy such good health at 68. I can’t imagine life without biking, walking, yoga classes, physical mobility. Yes, these are the “golden years.” But how long can they last?

Two weeks ago, my cousin had to cancel our plans to meet at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, and I had an entire day unscheduled. I cooked and listened to podcasts, took a bath and read, baked spoonbread in two pans and shared one with a neighbor who has suffered a broken collarbone. I never allow myself this luxury of time.

“When transitions happen and identities change, one of our great challenges is to find a new sense of meaning and purpose in our lives,” writes psychologist Mary Pipher in the 2019 book Women Rowing North, which is written for the phase of life I’m entering.

Image by freepik

This is my chance, finally, to put family first. To cultivate and honor friendships, the intentional family that has stood by me. To spend time with my first grandchild and be present for my grown sons. To retire not only from a career but from achievement and doing, from broadcasting accomplishments on LinkedIn, from filling up my calendar because it helps me feel important.

Time is fleeting. That’s a reality for everyone, but only in old age do you know it to be true.