Every time I get asked on some form or other about my employment status, I am forced to wonder whether I am really retired or not. When I moved out to this hilltop at age 65, I was technically still the CEO of a small venture-backed company for about another year. Then I stepped down and also started taking my Social Security payments at 67. I was also teaching and doing my expert witness work. But for the past 2+ years, while I have actively continued my expert witness work, I stopped teaching. Expert witness work is truly gig work in that I can choose to take on an assignment or not. But when I’m filling out those forms, I find myself saying that I am semi-retired. In a normal year I still earn quite a bit more than the average American for active work engagement, so I think I am earning that semi designation. When we travel, I say we are traveling or taking a trip, not that we are going on vacation. A vacation is defined as a period of time when you take a break from work, school, or your regular daily routine for rest, relaxation, travel, or leisure activities. Being retired is supposed to be a full-time enjoyment of a daily routine of rest, relaxation, travel or leisure activities. I don’t think retired people vacation. If they travel or take a trip, they are doing what retired people are supposed to do (if they so choose) and not really taking a break from something. I realize that is a debatable issue given that daily household routine, even for those who are retired, can sometimes benefit from a break in that routine, but again, that’s supposed to be part of retirement.
All that said and done, I don’t think our travel schedule has changed much in the twenty years Kim and I have been together. We more or less travel with the same regularity we always have. I have spoken many times of thinking that we will be slowing down our travel regimen, but I don’t recall ever suggesting that we were ratcheting up our travel since we were retiring. So, I’m coming to the conclusion that retirement for me/us has been more a continuation of our normal lives, albeit in a new and more accommodative venue of this hilltop. Any changes we are making has less to do with wanting or needing to shed ourselves of the workaday world or any specific tasks. The progression of our travel life has more to do with the aging process and the overall state of the world (including the crowdedness of the travel arena). There is no doubt we are preferring a slower pace of life, but all the same elements of work and travel are still in their place for us each. Kim is directing and choreographing a show right now and spends probably twenty-five hours per week doing it both on and off site. She’s even getting paid a nominal sum for her efforts, so it really does count as work. She has also filled in every once in a while with a modeling gig like she did one day last week for some pharmaceutical advertising. All that is pretty much as she was doing before we moved out here and “retired”.
But a funny thing has happened to me this fall. From mid-July through mid-September I was heavily engaged in work preparing for a trial that was to consume most of my September. I was also scheduled to begin another expert case in early October. But then case schedules changed and settlements were reached and I was suddenly left without work to do in most of September and October. While I technically have ten active cases right now (two dropped off and three were added in the recent past), and I foresee a good deal of work on many of those in 2026 and probably beyond, there is simply nothing active for me to do until perhaps early December. My “back to school” season has been anything but that and I am now six weeks into what has become a three month hiatus. During this time we have done or planned a few small trips, but nothing requiring more than a change of underwear and socks. I am in the middle of an extended break that has forced me to think about how to use my time.
The end result of this has been that I have developed a gardening routine that is about small projects and a lot of maintenance. I have developed some new friendships and reengaged in weekly motorcycle rides. That has led to me spending some time upgrading my riding equipment, less out of necessity and more out of a desire to upgrade my experience. I’ve spent more time focused on my family for one reason or another. My calls with my kids have been more involved, not because their needs are greater, but because I’ve spent a bit more time probing to act as a sounding board for some of their choices. I’ve even made myself more available to extended family that needs a bit of circumstantial help, because I feel I am simply more available. I have also now dedicated myself to this new health and weight-loss regime with a focus that would have been much harder if I had to share my force of will with something like rigorous work.
As I sit here this morning in a near perfect Southern California October morning, I find that I am, for perhaps the first time, feeling retired. That is not the retirement of angst that I have to find things to do or the retirement of sloth that I have no obligations. This is a healthy retirement…a responsible retirement. I will spend my day writing, which is both a passion and a sense of chronicling necessity, gardening to keep things nice rather than make them nice, going off to upgrade my motorcycle navigation system because I want to keep riding safely and comfortably, carefully preparing and eating things that are good for my new diet (I NEVER thought I would be saying those words…nor did Kim, she adds), and thinking about how I can help Kim, Buddy, my family, Kim’s family, and our friends in any way I can. I finally am grasping why more well-balanced people than I always say that they are busier in retirement than they were in their pre-retirement lives. I used to think that was just a palliative to ease their pain in retirement, but now I think that I may have missed that people can and do make retirement fulfilling and quite pleasant.
Now that I’ve finished my writing and had my morning protein shake, I’m off to the motorcycle store and then to the nursery for some more mulch. I will check on our friend Faraj, who has come down with a cold/flu while his wife is off visiting relatives in Tokyo. Then I will prepare for the ride out to Borrego Springs I have planned for tomorrow. Kim will be off tonight for her second rehearsal this week. So, basically, without ever touching one bit of work, I have a day that has purpose and feels like something I have probably enjoyed too little of in my almost 72 years…it feels like life.