The Life of Leisure
One of the categories of stories I post under is retirement. I chose that because for as long as I have been actively writing I have written on the subject of retirement, starting as early as the early 1990s when I was a mere forty-something. back then it was less about anticipation of retirement or longing for it. It was because I ran one of the largest retirement businesses in the world at Bankers Trust. I really got into the whole topic and felt that as a Baby Boomer who sits in the smack dab middle of my cohort, it was a topic I was reasonably well-positioned to deal with the issue. As a finance and investments person, I suppose everyone assumes that I am most interested in those aspects of accumulating maximum retirement income security, but that is much less so than one might imagine. I have always found the psychological aspects more fascinating. When I wrote a book about my career a few years ago, I cloaked it in the retirement theme and called it Gulag 401(k) for the fun of it. Gulags are supposed to be scary and confining places, but the word Gulag has always appealed to me for its sound more than anything. I do think plenty of people feel trapped by retirement, but I’m not so sure they are more trapped there than they were in youth, in school, in their careers or in their marriages. The notion of entrapment is a commonly held displeasure because we all prefer to be free and able to do whatever we want. And that’s the thing about retirement that is so very strange. What could be more liberating than to be finished with the working life and free to spend your time as you wish? That is the conundrum of retirement in a nutshell, we are all almost too free to do as we please.
Take today for example. I teach tomorrow, but I have already prepared tomorrow’s lecture and slides and I’ve even done the same for next week’s lecture, which is the last one of the course. In other words, other than giving and grading the final exam the week after that, I am finished with the course and am off the teaching circuit until September. I will prepare and update my Fall course over the summer and have already even reached out to most of the guest lecturers, so I have that situation well in-hand. Today, all I had to do was some banking business in town and take my motorcycle in for its annual fluid change regime. I sat at the dealership for the 90 or so minutes that took and then went over to the bank. Then I was done. I had even taken the time while at the dealership to take out my iPad and finish writing a story I had started yesterday. I remain about eight days ahead of myself and have no particular need to get even further ahead. It was close enough to lunch time so I went up to the local pub and sat at the bar and ordered some lunch.
I had my iPad with me so I took it out to check emails and to start another story (this story) while I waited for my lunch or for someone else to sit at the bar with whom to converse. Several other people sat down eventually and they too looked to be of similar age and they were eager to chat. For the second time this morning, I was asked if I was still working since I was busy typing on my iPad. I had to explain that I was not working, I was writing. That proved more confusing than anything else since they immediately assumed that I meant I was a professional writer. I suppose that in a pinch I could get away with saying I’m a professional since I have been paid for my written work on occasion and have two ghost-written books in the publication process, where I agreed to take as compensation, a 30% piece of the action. My working assumption is not that they will result in any monetary reward, but I suppose that stranger things have happened.
As I sit at the bar of this indoor/outdoor cafe, it is sunny, warm, breezy and generally pleasant. It’s the sort of weather that we would all call perfect. Not hot, not cold, just right. And with my day’s chores behind me I found myself thinking that I had found my life of leisure that we all aspire to. I literally had not a care in the world at that moment and was happy to sit sipping a Diet Coke and while away the remainder of the day. I wasn’t really prepared to do that, but it was nice to know that I could if I wanted. Instead I rode home, stopping to say hello to Winston who is back home after two weeks in the island of Kauai. I must admit, I have a hard time understanding why I would want to go to Hawaii for a few weeks of vacation. Vacation from what? A vacation from leisure seems somewhat redundant and since neither Kim nor I are particularly beach people, it seems silly to go to some beach resort to get away from what seems like somewhat perfect weather here.
This all makes me wonder if we are meant to be at leisure. I am reminded that when pensions were first invented, retirement age was approximately equivalent to expected life age, which is to say, we weren’t really supposed to live so very long in retirement. When I was much younger, I recall people saying that their goals was to retire by age ___. Some might say 40, some 50 and some might even say 30. Few would have said the “normal” retirement age of 65. That just seemed too long to be in harness to most people and they all figured they should aspire to stopping work well before then to live their lives of leisure.
This is all becoming a too regular theme for me and I need to break out of this “what do I do with my time” conundrum. It’s not healthy to contemplate your navel for too long. Get on with it. The problem, of course, is finding the it. I may have found something just yesterday but I am hesitant to share it since it may just be a passing thought. I think I am going to find a big log and start to chisel it into my very own totem pole. By definition, a totem is an object of spiritual significance that is representative or emblematic of one’s beliefs. I think I need a totem pole to put somewhere in my back hillside. I have carved stone and may choose to do more of that, but wood is certainly easier to work with and I think I can get into carving something of my own creation. So I am off on a mission to find a large log on which to begin my ambition of carving. The next question will inevitably be what exactly I am most interested in representing on my totem pole. I have lots of interests, but how will I translate them into wood and combine them into a piece that I will be proud to display. I have few answers to these questions at this point, but at least I have an it to hunt for. My goal is to maintain my life of leisure by finding ways to fill it and fulfill me at the same time.