Month: April 2017

Ponce, Puerto Rico – Since this past Sunday I have been spending time at a resort on Ponce, Puerto Rico, with my parents. Ponce is the city where my grandmother was born. It’s not much of a city, although to be honest I have not seen much of it. My parents are both 88 years old, and not quite as spry as they used to be, so I have mostly been sticking to the resort with them and spending time doing what they do. Their day consists mostly of eating and moving from one section of the resort to another: from the restaurant, to the beach, to the pool, to the bar, to the lobby, out to dinner, and home. They are usually done in by 6PM, so I have the evenings to myself. But there is not much to do in the resort in the evenings other than sit at the bar, and I am not one to head out and find the nightlife in downtown Ponce. Much as I enjoy listening to salsa music, I think my cha-cha days are behind me.

My parents, thank goodness, are for the most part in good health and retain their mental facilities, especially my father, but I can see the slowing down. They have been coming to this same resort every April for the past 7 years. They began by celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary at this place, and this year is their 66th. Being retired has now allowed me to come and spend time with them here, which I know they have enjoyed. It seems many of the staff know them pretty well as “regulars.” My mother speaks Spanish, although on this trip I have begun to discover that the language is leaving her through disuse. She has a tendency to use English first even when the staff addresses her in Spanish. I have been using Spanish as much as I can, but my speaking skills are much weaker than my comprehension or reading skills. We went out to a small boardwalk cosina yesterday for lunch, and I did all the ordering because the young man did not speak much English, and my mother could not hear him over the loud music (there is no such thing as background music in Puerto Rican culture). This experience is motivating me to spend time becoming more fluent in Spanish, probably through online courses. Notably, Google Translate has come in handy.

I am not a resort kind of person. The humidity is a bit high for this time of year, and unless you’re an avid swimmer or golfer or just like hanging around poolside with a mojito or a piña colada, there really is not that much to do. It is very much in the vein of sitting around doing nothing. Today I did bring a book with me (Kindle) to the beach while we sat, and that was better than just sitting. But I like to be doing things when I am on vacation, seeing sights or hiking or something along those lines. Ponce seems to be a little bit short on the sights: a small museum of art (which my father panned), a former mansion that’s now a museum, and that’s about it. Puerto Rico is actually a distressed place at the moment; it is not built primarily on the tourist industry as are places like Bermuda or the Virgin Islands. Overall the island is pretty run-down.

But this is not about me being on vacation. It’s about spending time with my parents, which is a nice thing now about retirement. No doubt in less than 10 years they will both be gone, so it’s great for me to spend this time with them and share a little of what they have come to love. And in a sense, I know I am looking at my own future in about 20 years, with any luck. Perhaps by then the idea of sitting in the lobby of a resort hotel in the warm weather will have gained a new respect from me. I am pretty damn sure it beats sitting in a nursing home.  -twl

Dunkirk, NY – I’ve discovered that, while there is a great deal of information on how to prepare for retirement financially, there is very little information on how to do so emotionally and psychologically. Already I am beginning to understand that this process will not be as smooth as anyone would like it. I’ve begun the process of researching some of the literature on the psychological stresses of retiring and seeing how they fit into my own plan.

What is that plan? Well, here’s the thing. As someone who has spent a career in the creative arts, it is more difficult to find information related specifically to the arts. I’ve always found that something of a handicap, as the overall landscape of research into the psychology of artists and their relationship to the world around them is scarce. How does an artist “retire?” One might assume they never do, and of course some don’t. But the question then of quality is an issue – how late into your life as artist can you produce quality work? Tough to say.

For the moment, my transition plan is as follows:

• Avoid the theatre. The reason for this is recovering from burnout. On April 9, I spent my last day working in a theatre, and that was the plan I set for myself. My whole life and the arc of my career has been in the theatre combined with education, and I feel right at the moment the intense need to shed that. No theatre for at least a year, either going as an audience member or taking a role. I have a job come summer of next year, but I wanted this full year off so that, when I get back in the saddle again next year, it will feel fresh and new. That has already been tested, as there are many events going on within the department, and I am not attending any of them other than the upcoming dance concert next week.
• I chose to have no retirement event. There are many reasons for that, but the most paramount one is that I hate being the center of attention. I am way too insecure a person to have people congratulate me for a good career. I tend to see only the things I failed at, and it seems that no amount of focus on my successes can counteract that. And I truly hate any situation where any sense of obligation on the part of people to show up is present. I did have a very nice event on Sunday after Pirates closed, in which a few people came down from Buffalo to have a brunch with me. That’s enough formality for me. I think this is just a personality quirk, or perhaps I simply have too great a fear of the possibility that, in scheduling such an event, very few people would show up.
• I am calling this year my “gap” year, or “decompression” year; the year between finishing my formal career and embarking on any plans. I don’t have any plans, really, at the moment other than some vague travel plans. I feel I need to decompress, and simply shed the years of obligation and responsibility and see what comes out on the other side. This vagueness actually causes a little stress, as time is already short, and spending a year figuring things out just removes another year. But I am hoping the planned fall trip and the excursion to see the solar eclipse will go a long way towards making that adjustment.
• The biggest challenge will be to overcome my own sense of futility. Every time I think about what to do in retirement, I seem immediately to understand the futility of such efforts. Continue an acting career? Where would the fresh challenges come from? And do I really care that much about the theatre anymore? And do I want the grind of rehearsals and performances? Write a book? No one will read it, and it probably won’t effect any significant change? Start a theatre? Probably a waste of time given the state of theatre in this culture. Volunteer? Work part-time? Both things tie you down to place and schedule. So at some point I will have to come to grips with how to deal with the futility issue.

Biologically speaking, humans probably weren’t meant to “retire.” Without the trappings and the progress of 21st century technology, life spans would be much shorter. Not 100 years ago, the average life span of a male in this country was 68. Social Security was originally conceived of as a 5-year stopgap measure. No one predicted that it would become a payout scheme for people for 25-30 years. People did not have to make these kinds of plans; they just died. Today, we have to figure out what to do with all this time we’ve given ourselves to live, and figure it out within the framework of diminishing physical and mental capacities. I think this is a relatively new psychological field, and one that I imagine will be getting far more attention in the next 10 years or so. Right now, this is my plan to approach the issue. We shall see how it plays out.  -twl

Dunkirk NY -I visited my doctor this past Wednesday. He’s a very good doctor, and has been our family doctor for close to 30 years now. He’s a GP, and we found him when we first moved into the area. He’s a bit of a ride away, maybe 40 minutes, but he’s worth it. We’re at the point where I call him Robert, and he feels quite comfortable in using four-letter words around me. He has a routine where he greets me with quotes from the witches in MacBeth (“A sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap”). I don’t mind going to the doctor, which I do about every three-four months under the guise of blood pressure screen. I take a small dose of a blood pressure medication. My three biggest health concerns are hypertension, a mild case of pigmentary glaucoma (eye drops), and obstructive sleep apnea (CPAP therapy).

What I have found out in going to the doctor so often, however, is that, now that I have reached 65, I get flagged for everything under the sun. So this time around, I had to give blood to check PSA rating, I was flagged for a shingles shot and a pneumonia shot, and I have to send in some stool samples via a pretty new process where you stain some small cardboard-like area with shitwater and send it through the mail.  Next time I go in it will be for cholesterol screening. I now begin to see what keeps seniors so busy – medical issues. I get the terrible feeling that much of their day is spent receiving medical care.

I also got the talk on exercise again. I know I should be exercising, and I really want to get back into the walking habit. I think what keeps me from getting up and moving around is the continuing feeling that I have something else to do. I chalk this up to the continuing adjustment period I believe I am in right now. I know things are going on in the department and the college, and I still get the urge to participate, but staying away is really the only solution. I wish I had gotten some little pill from my doctor to make this transition a little easier.

Final note – today is my parent’s 66th wedding anniversary. They are in Puerto Rico, and I will be joining them there this coming weekend for about 5 days. A week in Puerto Rico in April – that will be different.  -twl