Retirement

Although I'm still on the library's books as an employee until May 31, and although I have two days as a substitute booked during the summer, practically speaking I am now retired.

This isn't my first rodeo as a retiree.  I left the National Park Service at the end of 1997 on an "early out" option, and declined to continue teaching high school in 2004. So I know the ropes about not working. This time it's for keeps though. My working life is over.

And I don't  know how to feel about  that.  I hear you saying, "There's always plenty to do around the house - there's always cat vomit to clean up after all - you could volunteer someplace, join clubs and discussion groups, go hiking, take day trips to interesting places. That great American novel isn't going to write itself, you know, so get busy."

You're right, and I'll do those things, but there's still a kind of void. As that great social critic Homer Simpson once said, "My job is my identity. If I'm not a whatchamacallit, I'm nothing!"

So my first day out of the work force has me thinking, "The vacuum cleaner belt is broken. I have to check to see if we have a spare, or go buy a new one. I promised to bring lunch to Kris and take a hike with her. Our yard is full of dandelions that need to be dug out. Is this what my life is going to be from now on?"

I don't want to paint a bleak scenario here. There's a chess club here in town that I might join. I could do some political things. I haven't walked all the trails in the nearby state park. (Some of them are going to require a better level of physical conditioning than I have right now, and that's another thing to point at as a goal.) I want to do some volunteer work helping homeless people. But I'm going to wait a month and see whether I can fill the days or become awfully bored. Kris is already asking me to volunteer at the park.

Retirement is a real break in a person's life, akin to getting married or divorced. It remains to be seen how I'll take to it. I know I don't want to become a grumpy old man, or someone who sits by the side of a pond, feeding the ducks and waiting for death.

I'll be more upbeat about this by tomorrow, I promise.

(Oh yes. We're going to France next year, so I plan to spend a considerable amount of time sprucing up my French language skills. Adieu.)