Do you feel important?
My first column debuted Sept. 21, 2012, with these words: “I feel guilty admitting this because so many folks have to go to work every day, but retirement life isn’t working so well for me. I just hit the 2-year mark and have finally given myself permission to do nothing! This is not possible. Yesterday I ironed everything in my closet. I always hated to iron. This afternoon I cleaned the coffee stains from the inside of all of my white mugs. Did you know that Mr. Clean magic erasers could do this?
“Just a few moments ago I was tempted to graduate the cereal boxes in the pantry from tallest to smallest, or should it be smallest to tallest? Could it be that working outside the home made me saner? At the very least I used to feel important, intelligent and connected to the world!”
This morning I met a lovely woman named Joan in my neighborhood who has been retired for one week, and her head kind of bobbled to one side when she said, “This is all so new to me.”
Rita remembers when it was new too. “Those first few months after retirement are something like falling off a cliff. We count the days until the last day of work. Then we are in a euphoric state of happiness that there is no alarm clock to set, no schedule to meet, no deadlines and the free fall feels wonderful. And then one morning we wake up and realize a part of our life is missing. Now what?”
Some people never want to quit working. The last “CBS Sunday Morning” broadcast featured Don Francisco whose Spanish TV show “Sabado Gigante” has been entertaining audiences for 53 years. He has missed only one show, when his mother died in 1974.
Also on Sunday morning, you may have heard Ethel Weiss, age 101, talk about her toy and candy store in Brookline, Mass., which opened in 1939.
“Why do you keep going to work every day?” Steve Hartman asked.
“I don’t want to disappoint people. I don’t want it to fall apart at the seams,” she said.
Rita relates to Ethel’s sentiment. “When we retire, we are no longer the CEO or the chief of anything. No one comes to us for advice or answers or decisions. It hurts when all those programs and projects I birthed and nursed are cast aside, changed without consulting me.”
I felt this way too. It wasn’t until I began teaching part-time and writing for publication that I felt energized and happy again. I love the freedom of not having to be somewhere every day, but I like getting out of the house more than I like being in it. Probably because the windows are really dirty and I can’t see the dirt from the curb.
I had hopes that my readers would write to me and tell me about your retirement life. I am running out of ideas. Of course, I could recycle old columns and see if anyone remembers them.
Have you discovered a new hobby? Found happiness in a part-time job? Do you have an idea for this column? Names can be changed to protect the innocent, right, Linda? I mean Diane. Jeesh.
Write to lgraff1979@gmail.com.
