What are you going to do all day?
Today? Tomorrow?
I watched my father’s retirement devolve into drinking beer and watching Fox News all day, a big shift from his years of dedication to his work and his community projects. My mother, meanwhile, had volunteer commitments and babysat some grandchildren and had regular luncheons with friends. She was at least as busy in retirement as she was when working and when raising young children.
Many years ago, I interviewed a financial planner for a story, and she said that she asked her clients who were nearing retirement to work out an imagined schedule for a week. She found that a lot of people had vague ideas about travel and golf, but most had no idea what their life would look like without the structure of work. After all, “traveling more” probably means being at home for 46 weeks a year instead of 50, so there’s still a lot of time to fill.
In the New York Times Magazine retirement issue, financial writer Ron Lieber and illustrator Giacomo Gambineri teamed up to present the concept of a retirement mission statement (New York Times gift link). They recommend setting out broad ideas about what you care about and what you would like your life to be to help guide your decisions. The values come before the money.
I’m a big fan of making plans and developing routines, even though they never last. LIfe changes, all the time. You get a recall notice for your car. A friend texts and wants to go for a walk. A client emails asking for changes to a project on a day you were going to cut out early to go kayaking. Your agent calls with a ghostwriting project that will change your work schedule for the next six months.
Well, maybe not your car makers, your friends, your clients, or your agents. But you know what I mean.
Corporate mission statements make me cynical—and I am not alone. All the nice stuff about teams that support and challenge each other gets thrown out the window when revenue trends fall off. But it’s different in everyday life. You aren’t going to throw off your friends and family when things get rough. You’ll get through it. Your personal mission is stronger than that of any business.
With more on daily life, check out this song, “Vida Cotidiana” (literally, “daily life”) by Juanes, a Colombian singer who is probably the biggest singer-songwriter working in Spanish.
I think about this a lot. Although I look forward to work slowing down, I don't see myself really not working. (I realize I'm fortunate in that I should be able to write for a long time.) If possible, I'd like to continue doing that long as possible, but devoting more time to fiction. Maybe that will change and I'll decide I want to hang out all day, but I don't see it.
Thanks for writing & sharing this one, Annie, & including the link to the NYT retirement mission statement article. I shared w my husband, who's 10 yrs older than me. He's 62, and works a corporate job, so retirement seems like a not-far-away-or-impossible thing. I'm 52. Due to the age difference (and the fact that we are not independently wealthy, I'll likely have to keep working for a good while after he retires -- and that brings up some of what Denise mentions too. And is also part of why I've been asking him, even before I read your post, "what do you see yourself doing in retirement?" B/c 1. I don't think he's thought that through, and 2. Him puttering around the house or yard all day while I'm trying to work could be a problem.