Retirement

 “So its for sure now, I will retire.”  I have been waiting 33 years of my life to say that.  The only ones that can relate are those that have experienced or will experience the same thing.  I am learning that the hard way.  I know my wife doesn’t understand.  She never had the experience of showing up for the same job for 33 years.  This was mostly by design as our transient life never allowed her the consistency of a career.  

For 33 years I have had to be responsible to something other than myself and my family.  I have had to follow the government’s rules.  I have had to live my life around the demands of another. 

For some people their career becomes their identity.  They are their job.  It is a function so intertwined with day to day existence that when the link is broke their life loses meaning.  I am not one of those people.  I am grateful for my career.  For the places it has taken me and the life it has given me.  I am also grateful to leave my desk and computer behind for the last time.  To say goodbye to the personalities, some agreeable some not so much.   

I relish the thought of waking up in the morning and have nothing defined for my day aside from that which I define.  I don’t think I have felt that way since I was 12 years old on a summer break.  Truth be told I will probably be board out of my mind in a week.  Still I look at it as an opportunity.  

My wife is terrified. I think it is mostly economic but she is likely concerned about having me around all the time.  On the economic side there is a fear of loss of control.  For 33 years I have had a pay check deposited in our account.  In response, she pays our bills and saves what she can.  Being in control she knows what is there and feels confident when she buys things for herself.  Now she is confronted with an undefined future.  This is because most of the investments that we will live on combined with my pension are in my name or at least monitored and controlled by me.  This creates uncertainty on her part.  We will eventually work through this as income sources are defined and monthly streams start to come.  At that point she will resume feeling a kind of predictability however, the transition will be difficult.  

I think for my part my greatest fear is something going wrong financially.  Something was not calculated correctly by me and I have to tell her that “I fucked up.”  I don’t think that will happen but life is filled with unknowns.  We live in a tiny house and with the prospect of my son and his wife living with us as they transition in life, I am confronting the spatial limitations of existing in 1100 sq feet with three others and a dog.  When I spoke of needing a desk as we contemplated where in the hell we would put it, my wife questioned was it something I really needed. 

I reminded her that for 33 years my office was my desk.  For five days a week, 8 hours a day I would go to another place and along with my assigned tasks, accomplish my own.  The reality is she has never seen this side of me.  While it has been an ever present side of my own life it is virtually non existent to her.  That is the strange conundrum one faces when they retire and merge what is essentially two lives into one.  

Retirement forces one to ask themselves who they are and what they want to be.  I like to think I have an answer to this question but in truth I am not sure.  It is also much more complicated when balancing this discovery against the needs and necessities of a relationship.

As I look through the pages of my calendar and count the dwindling number of days remaining one fact certainty does pop up from the pages.  It is the reality that my professional time is coming to an end and for better or for worse its time to turn the page.  In a way I guess the agents I work with are lucky.  For them at 57 years they hit mandatory.  They have to leave.  This certainly makes it an easier transition when it comes to marital expectations.

While theoretically not so old in my agency I feel like a dinosaur.  Almost everyone I have ever known and worked with has left.  They have all timed out or chosen to walk away.  Now its my turn.  The strange thing is I feel like what is essentially a personal decision is a battle against the interests of others.  For the coworkers that remain it is a self serving attitude of not wanting to lose my work performance.  Perhaps it is also a reminder to the older of them that their time is also coming to an end.  The problem is these people often continue to exist because their identities are intertwined with their profession.  

As the auspicious day of my departure grows closer in my mind I simply want to be there one day and then be gone.  To steal a line from Douglas MacArthur and the military, “Old soldiers “analysts” never die, they just fade away.”  In my case however, I didn’t have to threaten nuking China to do it.