Control Yourself
I am exploring a side of life that comes up every so often. It is that strange balancing act we all do between keeping busy and being busy. Keeping busy is a good thing that has many benefits including the fulfillment of some purpose and an identification that we are adding value in some way to the world. Being busy sounds like an excuse right from the get-go and generally envisages a state of disorder and preoccupation that is unproductive. The fine art of busy is a prime topic in retirement. I write and think a lot about retirement. It has become a defining issue for me. Just last night we went to the theater at the La Jolla Playhouse, a well respected feeder theater for future Broadway hits. While there, Kim bumped into one of her good friends from her singing group, Encore. This is a woman of about her age who lives in La Jolla. While Kim was in the bathroom, the woman, Dorian, came across the aisle to introduce herself to me. After the show as we filtered out of the theater, we had a good deal of time to talk. To begin with, we were both in the front row, which meant that we were among the last to leave the theater. Secondly, the Sunday night clientele at the La Jolla Playhouse probably has an average age of eighty, so we were moving up the stairs very slowly. Dorian mentioned that they had been busy due to gatherings associated with her husband, Jim’s, recent retirement as a lawyer. Just looking at Jim told me that we were of similar age. Dorian is three years younger than Kim and Jim looked to be about three years younger than me. That would have put him exactly at standard retirement age as we currently define it in the United States.
Jim was a corporate attorney for one of the larger companies in the San Diego area. That means that he probably prospered, as evidenced by the fact that he and Dorian live in the company’s backyard in La Jolla, where the median income is $82,000. The average income in the U.S. overall is $31,000 and in San Diego it is $38,500. Our little enclave of Hidden Meadows has an average income of $42,000 (I suspect it is even higher in our little sub-enclave of this 40-family hilltop, but that data is not readily online). You get my point. La Jolla is a prosperous, upper-middle income area surrounded by other such areas like Del Mar and Rancho Santa Fe. Dorian and Jim look the part of the well-to-do community in which they live and as such, I doubt that they are struggling with the financial hardships that can accompany retirement for many people in America and the world. But I am certain, even after only meeting them for several friendly and chatty moments, that they share the problem of how to deal with the busy issue.
Given that Jim has just retired (I’m afraid that I do not know if Dorian has or had a career other than as a wife and mother), it is too soon to address the issue, but he shows all the immediate signs of someone who will have the problem of time management. To begin with, Dorian plays tennis every day, according to Kim, and Jim seems to play a lot of golf. In fact, golf came up in the first one or two sentences that were uttered about him and his retirement. That makes him a bit of an upper-middle class stereotype, even though he seemed nice enough and earnest enough. The sad reality of the moment is that we all look for political orientation clues these days, and Jim and Dorian’s demographics imply that they are probably more left-leaning than not, simply given that they live in San Diego near the coast. I imagine our more inland orientation make us the less likely liberals than they are, but it only took a few moments of reconnoitering for me to explain my connection these days to the legal community through my expert witness work. That led me to mention my review of the Trump civil case about the overvaluation of his properties and I did not get any signals from that discussion that would deter me from declaring Jim and Dorian likely Democrats, whether in official Party affiliation or just general disposition (like us). If I were placing a bet, I would say that they are socially liberal and fiscally conservative.
None of that political orientation really matters on the issue of time management at the conceptual level, though I imagine it plays into the issue of how one might spend one’s time. We all start retirement relishing the freedom and sense of extra time we have to ourselves. Playing golf or tennis every day seems very sensible. It is probably something we never got quite enough of with our work schedules being what they were, not to mention anything physical seems like a good idea since we probably all think that retirement is finally our time to get control of our physical well-being. That all makes sense and we purposefully seek out new or refreshed acquaintances with people with similar schedule flexibility to play with. For me, I have played both golf and tennis in my day, though Kim has done neither. That matters since retirement is also a time for couples to be able to seemingly do more together and shared interest in a sport is a good starting point. My tennis days are further in the past than for golf, though I did manage a tennis club for two summers and certainly honed my racquet skills well enough to consider myself proficient at tennis. I would have said I was competitive, but not serious about the sport. I probably enjoyed more the surprise in defeating someone seemingly more fit or more committed to the sport, than actually prevailing due to practiced skill. But tennis is a brutal sport on the joints since it involves starting and stopping on a hard surface (unless you are fortunate enough to play on grass), so it has its physically damaging limits for most of us.
Golf is a personal story onto itself for me. I grew up with a mother who loved golf from her collegiate youthful years. During one formative stint in Maine (ages 12-14), we lived on the 18th hole of a golf course and for three summers I worked and played full-time on the golf course. There was nothing about the game that escaped my attention from the etiquette to the subtleties of the short game. Golf involves an unnatural motion and thus, is best learned young so that muscle memory can help you hone a natural swing. The culture of golf is also somewhat unnatural and learning it early in life makes you an easier person to play with later on. Despite a three year hiatus from golf when I lived in Italy (there were, at the time, perhaps five courses in the whole country), I picked it up again in college and that brought me into banking as a young professional who understood everything about the game and played it respectably. That made me a natural for running golf outings for clients, which I did to good success in advancing my presence and therefore my career off the course. But it all also ran through whatever enthusiasm I had for the game and I no longer even own a set of clubs and haven’t played for a few years now. I have no interest in golf and I suspect Jim will get to that place at some point sooner or later.
This morning I am waiting at the Mercedes dealership for a regular service to be performed on Kim’s car. Besides using the waiting time to write yet another story of my life, times and meandering thoughts, I am watching a video on the Outdoor Channel about how to survive in the north woods, should I ever get lost there with only a pen knife and ball of string. In other words, I am finding ways to stay busy without golf or tennis, which is where we all sooner or later end up in retirement, once we get past the notion that we are so very busy that we don’t know how we ever had time for work… My advice for a successful retirement is to control yourself and find a comfortable place between staying busy (which is dangerously unproductive) and being busy (which is equally dangerous for also being unproductive in a different way).