Earlier in this blog I complained about the challenges of having a stay-at-home spouse, when I wasn't expecting one (Mr. R-T was sick the first 2 weeks of my retirement -- sick enough to stay home.) Now that we are on a more normal schedule, I mostly enjoy my solitude, but there are interesting challenges.
I think it would be a really bad idea for a couple to both retire at the same time. It might make sense if you immediately moved to a new location, but with part of our lives staying the same, I want to get really used to retirement before Mr. R-T is around all the time, changing his routine every day (as I do now). Even now, we sometimes trip over each other in the morning making our breakfasts (we had things carefully synchronized to be in the kitchen at slightly different times when I was working). There is a lot more we need to explicitly communicate, when before, our many years of routine made us aware of the fact that he sleeps in on Mondays when I (used to) get up very early that day (now when I get up "depends", of course).
Mr. R-T has taken to asking me to text him when I return from hikes or bike rides, especially if I am going alone. That's probably sensible, though he never asked before. And since I've changed when I do laundry to new days of the week, he's having a hard time remembering when to expect there to be clean laundry to fold. But mostly, he benefits a lot from this deal -- I'm home during the day to accept packages (last Friday I had to stay home the entire day to deal with deliveries and repair people), and there are fewer days when he is on his own for dinner because I have an evening activity (I can get together with lots of my friends during the day). And the occasional crisis ("I forgot to pick up my jacket that's at the cleaners, and I need it tonight. Can you make a trip there?"), is hard to say no to. I'm trying to make sure that we have the right balance -- that I don't end up feeling exploited. I think this part would be a lot harder if both of us had made big changes to our routines at once. And I suspect I would feel micro-managed if he were around to comment on everything I did, though that may still be a problem when/if he does retire.
But a larger issue is that I have chunks of time when I'd love to do things with another person, and he's not available. I am slowly finding other people for the visits to museums or talks I want to hear, but I'm hoping to do more travelling, and he's not nearly as flexible as I am (I'd like to take advantage of various last minute deals I have seen). So that's the downside of us not both being retired.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Monday, April 22, 2013
Planning for retirement II: how to tell when you are ready
A friend of mine was recently laid off; it was more or less a surprise (she saw some of it coming, but was a bit in denial about it). She is only a couple years younger than I am, and her financial advisor told her she could retire now, if she wanted. Her reaction was that retiring was less effort than looking for another job in her specialized field and at her age, so she might as well retire (not exactly looking forward to retiring, it sounds), and then she mentioned that she would write a (technical) book or do some consulting in her retirement.
I know several people who are doing consulting as a way to "ease into" retirement, and it seems to work well for some and not so well for others (I think the difference is whether you have one or more clients to get you started). The only people I know who are writing technical books in retirement are people who were writing books before they retired -- I don't know anyone who took this up as a post-worklife activity. My interpretation here is that my friend is not really ready to retire, but feels pushed out of the nest. And I think the core resistance to retirement for this friend is not money or boredom, but that her personal identity is tied up in her professional life.
When I first seriously considered retiring, about 7 years ago (I knew I wanted to leave my job -- was it worth hunting for a new one, or should I just move into the next stage of my life?), I kept getting hung up on the fact that I wouldn't see the people I regularly see at conferences, I wouldn't have some of the intellectually challenging conversations I often have at work or with colleagues from other companies (I might have them with different people on different topics, but not the ones I was accustomed to), and when people asked me "what do you do?" I would say 'I'm retired'. (it's a little pretentious to say 'I'm a retired xxx', in my opinion, and besides, all people hear is "blah blah retired blah blah"). That made me recognize that I wasn't ready to be retired, even though I might be ready to retire. But having that discussion with myself made me take more notice of the upsides of retirement (the opportunities to meet new people and discuss new topics), and to notice that I gradually got less and less invested in my role as a "UX person". I also had lots of "been there, done that" experiences, where I started to feel like everything I was doing was a minor variant of a previous experience, so I wasn't working because of the unique experiences it brought me. The need to introduce myself by my professional handle gradually went away, and the idea that I would either not mention a profession (let them think that I sat at home and ate bon-bons for the last 40 years) or identify myself as retired sort of grew on me. That, more than anything else, made me feel I was ready to retire.
I don't know how to help anyone get to that stage, and it did take me seven years, but I do think it is an important step. Of course, many people end up in situations like my friend, where they don't get to choose the timing of their retirement. I'll let you know what I learn from seeing her make the transition (assuming she doesn't look for and find another job).
I know several people who are doing consulting as a way to "ease into" retirement, and it seems to work well for some and not so well for others (I think the difference is whether you have one or more clients to get you started). The only people I know who are writing technical books in retirement are people who were writing books before they retired -- I don't know anyone who took this up as a post-worklife activity. My interpretation here is that my friend is not really ready to retire, but feels pushed out of the nest. And I think the core resistance to retirement for this friend is not money or boredom, but that her personal identity is tied up in her professional life.
When I first seriously considered retiring, about 7 years ago (I knew I wanted to leave my job -- was it worth hunting for a new one, or should I just move into the next stage of my life?), I kept getting hung up on the fact that I wouldn't see the people I regularly see at conferences, I wouldn't have some of the intellectually challenging conversations I often have at work or with colleagues from other companies (I might have them with different people on different topics, but not the ones I was accustomed to), and when people asked me "what do you do?" I would say 'I'm retired'. (it's a little pretentious to say 'I'm a retired xxx', in my opinion, and besides, all people hear is "blah blah retired blah blah"). That made me recognize that I wasn't ready to be retired, even though I might be ready to retire. But having that discussion with myself made me take more notice of the upsides of retirement (the opportunities to meet new people and discuss new topics), and to notice that I gradually got less and less invested in my role as a "UX person". I also had lots of "been there, done that" experiences, where I started to feel like everything I was doing was a minor variant of a previous experience, so I wasn't working because of the unique experiences it brought me. The need to introduce myself by my professional handle gradually went away, and the idea that I would either not mention a profession (let them think that I sat at home and ate bon-bons for the last 40 years) or identify myself as retired sort of grew on me. That, more than anything else, made me feel I was ready to retire.
I don't know how to help anyone get to that stage, and it did take me seven years, but I do think it is an important step. Of course, many people end up in situations like my friend, where they don't get to choose the timing of their retirement. I'll let you know what I learn from seeing her make the transition (assuming she doesn't look for and find another job).
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Getting Back into the Saddle Again
I've learned that once you fall off the blogging wagon, it's hard to get back on. We had a couple of visitors, back-to-back, lasting a few weeks, and our spare room is also my office, where my desktop machine (with the real keyboard) is. I'm just not yet able to think (and type fluently) on a tablet, so I didn't blog while they were here, and since then -- well, it's one excuse after another.
I'm not yet feeling like I have my "retired sea legs". I have managed to mostly get more exercise, both hiking and biking. I've done one cycling metric century (the Cinderella ride: 2500 women cyclists) and will do my second next weekend. I'm finding friends to have lunch and do other things with (went to Berkeley with a woman friend to see Tom Stoppard's Shipwrecked last night. The one sentence review is: a play that has a cast like a Russian novel, has characters who are Russian, and requires you to know a lot of Russian history is going to resemble a Russian novel in many ways. Not the least of which is perceived length.) I'm also doing vegetable gardening. We will be eating the beginning of my salad makings starting next week. So I'm settling in to a set of retiree activities, but not really a routine.
I've also decided to take on a few professional activities. I've been asked to review a book that a former colleague is writing (this one I actually get paid for), and another colleague is asking for contributions to his blog about "ethnographic war stories". I'll see whether that makes me feel at all nostalgic for my professional work. I'm also committed to porting some features to mailman 3.0, which I've been completely ignoring because of all the other things going on. I'm sure this will be fun, but it will also tell me how much I want to continue coding. If I do, it should be quite easy to find open source projects that take up as much or as little time as I want to spend.
Starting to think about travelling as part of my retirement. I think that a bunch of things will keep us from doing a big vacation this summer, but I'd like to see if we can plan some 3-day weekends away. It's something we never really made work when both Mr. R-T and I were working, but maybe with more time to plan (and to recover), we can do a few of those.
I'm not yet feeling like I have my "retired sea legs". I have managed to mostly get more exercise, both hiking and biking. I've done one cycling metric century (the Cinderella ride: 2500 women cyclists) and will do my second next weekend. I'm finding friends to have lunch and do other things with (went to Berkeley with a woman friend to see Tom Stoppard's Shipwrecked last night. The one sentence review is: a play that has a cast like a Russian novel, has characters who are Russian, and requires you to know a lot of Russian history is going to resemble a Russian novel in many ways. Not the least of which is perceived length.) I'm also doing vegetable gardening. We will be eating the beginning of my salad makings starting next week. So I'm settling in to a set of retiree activities, but not really a routine.
I've also decided to take on a few professional activities. I've been asked to review a book that a former colleague is writing (this one I actually get paid for), and another colleague is asking for contributions to his blog about "ethnographic war stories". I'll see whether that makes me feel at all nostalgic for my professional work. I'm also committed to porting some features to mailman 3.0, which I've been completely ignoring because of all the other things going on. I'm sure this will be fun, but it will also tell me how much I want to continue coding. If I do, it should be quite easy to find open source projects that take up as much or as little time as I want to spend.
Starting to think about travelling as part of my retirement. I think that a bunch of things will keep us from doing a big vacation this summer, but I'd like to see if we can plan some 3-day weekends away. It's something we never really made work when both Mr. R-T and I were working, but maybe with more time to plan (and to recover), we can do a few of those.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)