From Chapter 1 OMOC

  

 Former Career...

 (From Chapter 1 of my memoir--Old Man On Campus.)
There’s a growing body of knowledge about the question of retirement, and how it applies to us boomer types, or does not as appears to be the case.  Unlike our parents, who followed the expected pattern of learn-work-reproduce-retire-die, all nicely accomplished with no fuss by age 65 or so, we boomers have added a wrinkle at the end, a second, or third career.  When social security became law, in 1935, the average recipient was on the roles for about three years before they checked out, leaving the fund happily solvent.  That generation was known for its selfless attitude, after all.  Ours?  Not so much.  Not only have we had far fewer workers per recipient paying into the system, only five, on average, compared to eleven when my dad was working, we have the audacity to stay alive a lot longer, too.  Those of us boomers who reach age fifty can expect another 30 years, at least fifteen of them reimbursed by the guv’mint just for our continued breathing.  We’re restless, curious, and fearless.  For us, the word retire has been changed to rewire.  My generation is going to be the so-called geri-actives, and as long as we stay healthy, we have no intention of giving up work.  Our ‘golden years’ will be marked by second, and third careers.  We’re seeing that retirement isn’t a phase, it’s a process, a winding down by perhaps winding back up in another field.  This second adulthood makes perfect sense when you think about it.  Just 100 years ago, life expectancy in this country was 47 for males.  It’s now almost double that.  When I quit flying, I did try to take it easy for a time, to sniff around, check out other things, even considering a semi-retired status as a volunteer.  I soon realized that the pace was killing me; I’m just not cut out for a life of ease and relaxation, at least not yet.  While my spouse left for work every morning, I stayed behind, in a kind of eternal weekend, sinking lower and lower into a truly painful ‘roleless role,’ as Marc Freedman, author of Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life¹, calls the status of those who are too young to retire, too old to start over.  Freedman writes of the need for “self management” as a requisite for this new second adulthood, and that’s about right.  When you think about it, the first half of life--school, marriage, work, career, kids etc.--is all about compulsion, the necessity of climbing the ladder to the beat of someone else’s drum, be it a boss, a career goal of some kind, or a hierarchy of administrative benchmarks.  There’s always someone else there to mark our progress, and to keep us in check.  The second half of life, on the other hand, is typically characterized not by compulsion, but by choice, the self-imposed demand to focus on what we want our encore career to be.  We’re pounding our own drum, often descending the ladder toward something simpler, yet more fulfilling.  And everyone knows it’s always harder climbing down, since the path is harder to see.  Thus, self-management is a needed skill, and because of its long lack of use, or its lack of development early in life, self-management--of time, money, resources, relationships--may be the toughest part of our journey. 
    But it’s a journey I began despite all the social cues to do otherwise.  I heard from family, friends, former career colleagues how wonderful it must be to relax, lay back, let my spouse take care of me, savor the successful career I’d recently completed.  It all sounded good; it wasn’t; I was miserable.  The thought of holding down the couch, nestled in my bathrobe at noon, fingering the remote as Regis and Kathy Lee entertained me, was downright terrifying.  I had to find something else.  Besides, I couldn’t figure out the goddam remote.
¹ ©PublicAffairs Books, June 2007