It happened gradually, and it happened overnight. Over the course of two years — and then seemingly without warning — I have become ready, finally, to embrace retirement. Not to cease being physically active (ever!) or contributing as a volunteer. Not even to give up my quarter-time gig as an editor and nurturer of younger writers.
Instead, after more than 40 years of seeking identity and purpose and meaning through work, I have stopped defining myself as a careerist. As “what I do.” The question to answer now is: Who am I?
“Seasons change, people grow together and apart, life moves on. You will be OK, embrace it.”
— “Words From a Wanderer,” by Alexandra Elle
When I left full-time work in September 2022, at age 65, I would visibly stiffen whenever people asked me about “retirement.” Indeed, I defiantly declared in a blog post that my two part-time jobs qualified me as working — still in the game! — especially since the positions utilized my skills and had professional sounding titles, which felt important to me then. I also defined retirement, in part, as the decision to draw Social Security, and I aimed to avoid that until I hit my full retirement age of 66 years and 6 months.
Fast-forward to today:
- I left one of my two part-time gigs in early June, the one that paid better but was more chaotic and uncertain.
- I opted to begin drawing Social Security when I turned 67, on July 4, and will receive my first check in August.
- I have become more particular about the freelance work I will accept, turning down a potential offer that would have paid well for at least a year but had aspects that run counter to my values.
Back in February, I woke up earlier than usual on the morning I was set to give notice at my second job. As I sipped my café au lait before sunrise, I listened to a podcast about emotional intelligence in retirement. The speakers urged listeners to name their feelings and even state them aloud, like a 6-year-old: I feel sad. No, not that. I found a letter from the Social Security Administration in a neglected pile of mail, and I recognized a different feeling: I feel scared.
As well as humbled, helpless, hopeful. What comes next?
Where do aging people find community?
Twice last week, on consecutive days, I had rich conversations with women about loneliness and the meaning of friendship, about where we seek and find community now that our networks are shrinking, and our family responsibilities — whether raising children or caring for aging parents — are largely done.
One talk was with my widowed sister, who hasn’t worked in years (the workplace being a hub of socializing and people contact) and who recently moved from her familiar neighborhood. She plays Mahjong with her former neighbors and recently joined a cards group. That squares with advice in a New York Times article back in May, which cited research showing that adults on either end of the age spectrum may be vulnerable to loneliness — and can offset it by volunteering and joining groups.
My second discussion was with a longtime friend who is planning to retire early next year. I told her about the “Women in Retirement” group I had visited recently after months of finding excuses not to go. “The women all looked so old when I walked in,” I said, and then we laughed, knowing full well that the image I carry of myself in my head is not the one that looks back at me in photographs.
Starting from young adulthood, self-reported loneliness tends to decline as people approach midlife only to rise again after the age of 60.
— “The Loneliness Curve,” New York Times, May 21, 2024
Both conversations revolved around the gap between our own perceptions of our energy and vitality — the contributions we still hope to make in the world — and the diminishing way that people perceive us, if they think of us at all. My sister’s young adult grandkids see her as “an old lady,” she says, and rarely are in touch. My friend and I, who met 40 years ago in a newsroom, discussed the coming loss of a collegial community at work, even in a part-time job like mine.
Friendship was the topic at the “Women in Retirement” group last week, with a focus on the axiom that we have friends for a reason, friends for a season and friends for life (credit a poem by Brian A. “Drew” Chalker). My small coterie of friends for life — the handful of people who know me as myself, not within a role or professional position — are friends I made back in my 20s and 30s.
Am I still capable of forging and investing in such deep and trusting friendships, or has it become easier to blanket myself in the comfort of people I’ve known for years? Time will tell; and time, I now recognize, in one of aging’s many insights, is an ever-diminishing commodity.
How do we reconcile our shifting energies?
During the four decades when I worked full time, full-bore — setting the “gold standard” for work ethic, one of my managers used to say — I had a standard answer when people asked where I was going on vacation: “Off the clock.” I’ve lived by a calendar and to-do lists for so long that I don’t know how else to operate. The part-time job, the one or two freelance gigs I always have going, the uptick in volunteering: All add up to days that feel nearly as full as the 50-hours-a-week career.
But guess what? It’s catching up to me. At 67, I no longer can summon the energy of a 45-year-old. So: Why do I still take so much pride in staying busy? I hear my late mother posing a question that annoyed me at the time: “You’re always running, Amy. What are you running from, I wonder.” Some part is habit. Some is trying to remain relevant (as though a person my age can do that in our ageist society). Some is denial. An even bigger part is fear.
Professor and historian Heather Cox Richardson recently observed that “democracy is a process, and it’s never finished.” I feel the same way about retirement. To concede that my work life — and productivity, as I’ve defined it — is behind me, to accept that family, friends and volunteering are what can bring me peace and purpose, is to take a giant leap into the unknown.
“There is always something truly restorative, really, finally comforting, in learning what is true. In coming to the end of an illusion, a false hope,” wrote Sue Miller in her 1995 novel “The Distinguished Guest,” which I just finished. If I sit still long enough, I can name the illusion, even as I wince at its futility and hubris — the conceit that I could outrun and outwit age.
The Middle Stages: Between Midlife and Old Age 