Officially, I don’t retire until September 1, but since I don’t work over the summer, I’ve already begun to consider myself retired. I’ve been looking forward to this moment for some time. I am relieved to be delivered of the daily stresses of a full-time career, even though I really enjoyed my work. But perhaps my first realization as I came to retire was that I am now on the outside, looking in. It is a curious position to be in.
Retirement means separation. In my institution, the term used is that specific: I will be “separated from service” on September 1. I already feel that sense of separation. My mind seems to understand intellectually that I have no more responsibilities to my former job, but my body has not yet adapted. It still gets that internal sense of anxiety, trying to remind me that there is something I need to do (there isn’t) or that tomorrow is Monday and I have to get ready to go to work (I don’t). It doesn’t understand that, at the moment at least, every day is Sunday, and there are no more Mondays. Adjustments have to be made.
But there is a larger sense of separation I am feeling, and that is separation from society, from culture. All of a sudden, free from the responsibilities of the workplace, I have the time to look at the world around me more closely. Frankly, I don’t care for much of what I see. It is, of course, one of the driving forces of retirement; no matter how much you may have liked your work, there comes a time when what you see happening around you no longer matches your own personal conceptions and priorities. I didn’t care for much of what I saw beginning to happen in higher education and in theatre (my two career focuses), and so I made the active decision to retire — to separate — rather than hang on.
The tradeoff is freedom. Now I get to say whatever it is I want to say without the associated fears of pissing people off, losing a job, worrying about promotions or status, etc. etc. But I don’t want to become merely a curmudgeon. I actually fear that more than anything else — becoming the crotchety old man telling kids to get off my lawn, and reminiscing about when times were better. There is, I believe, some merit to the notion that being on the outside and looking in to a culture can afford a certain objectivity to the observations. But how does one observe and comment on society and culture without becoming a curmudgeon?
I have always believed that life is a balancing act. Juggling, as a metaphor for life, is a particularly apt one, for it requires that you have the skill to maintain more physical items (3 or more) than you have hands to control them (2). I can juggle, but my skill is limited to three balls at a time, at which I’m pretty good. I can do four for maybe 20 seconds, and I can juggle three clubs for maybe 45 seconds. Perhaps in retirement I can improve on these skills — I have the time. The art is in the balance of energy you apply to the objects to keep them in motion and in proportion.
I hope, as an “apprentice writer,” to write about balancing the new with the old, past cultural realities with present ones, trying to preserve what’s positive about traditions while incorporating progressive concepts — in short, trying to juggle the culture’s contradictions. I’m only an observer, and will never pretend to be an expert at anything. I feel particularly free to write about anything I like, anything I observe: sports, politics, art, whatever comes to mind. Hell, I need to fill all this free time!
But don’t ask me to participate, or criticize me for not being in the game, because that’s not something I wish to do anymore. I’m moving to becoming a cultural non-participant. My business for my life is now creating that final sense of self before death, a sense of who I am without any societal crutches on which to lean. That’s my activity, my action. Just think of me as your grandfather, who’s too old now to play, watching you play in a baseball game and giving you tips from his experience. Maybe some are valuable, maybe some are just bullshit. Just keep this in mind as you read — nobody but an asshole tells their grandfather he’s full of shit, even if he did vote for Trump. What, after all, would be the point of that? -twl
