Dunkirk NY – I have been directing my last show over the past three weeks, and I have also taken up two classes to fill in for a colleague who needed surgery. Both of these are obligations, things I have to get done each day. Although they are minimal, they are obligations nonetheless, and I find that, while they are not particularly onerous, I would prefer not to have them. If there is one goal I have for my new life in retirement, it is to have a life free of as many obligations as possible.
I think this is why I am hesitant to retire to something, as is often advised. I would like to enjoy some period of time where I am obligated to nothing at all, where every day is as open to any possibilities as I care to think about. Days where I have absolutely nowhere to go and nothing to do for anyone else besides myself. That is the current ideal I am shooting for.
Few people manage to live completely obligation-free lives, and I do not expect to achieve one myself. There is always family, for example. But in taking up the two activities mentioned above, I am realizing how much I really would rather not have them. I get home from rehearsal and find myself internally grumbling at having spent another evening in a dark rehearsal room hammering out another production whose eventual end and purpose is not particularly meaningful to me, but whose end and purpose is meaningful to others. I have found going back to the classroom not too inspiring, because it’s mostly the same old things I have been talking about for many years; and again, for me there appears to be no purpose, but for the students there is some purpose (although in reality the purpose for them is really quite short-term). Had it not been for the fact that I am helping out a colleague, I would not have taken the classes of my own accord. I do not see in the future any reason why I should ever step into a teaching situation again.
Teaching brought to me a career where others needed me, and becoming an administrator did the same thing for colleagues. As I was building my career, that was OK. I think 30 years ago I very much wanted to be needed. But over time that burden became harder and harder to bear, particularly as I began to view my chosen profession as, on the whole, one that carried little meaning in the current cultural climate. Wanting to be needed about something so socially superfluous as theatre and acting (at least in the early 21st century) became, to me, less and less tolerable.
Right now, my vision of a perfect retirement is to get to a point where I am superfluous, and nobody needs me for anything. That way, I will never have to be in a position to tell someone, “Sorry, but no.” They will eventually forget about me because they don’t need me anymore. In this semi-retired state that has not been true, and of late too many situations have come up where I have been “needed” for one reason or another. But with some luck, by mid-April I hope to enter that phase of life where people will move on from me, so I can move on from them.
Recently I took a trip to New York City to see a former student who had suffered a stroke, and I had some time to kill, so I went to Jones Beach for a walk and some time for thought. Here are some pictures I took while wandering the beach.