Getting Off Track: Getting to Retirement after Retirement 4

Tales of an Overachieving Retiree
(Article 1)

A series of articles about the challenges of bringing overachievement into retirement and finding pleasure in the process

By Peter
Primary English Teacher / Curriculum Advisor
Retired 2009

Why am I sitting at my computer composing an article on retirement? Well, the first reason is that I had a gentle nudge to do it. The second is my interest in a challenge to actually write something and see it printed.  The third reason is to take time to look at where I have been in my retirement, where I am going, but mainly who it is that has retired.  So a couple of days ago, instead of getting started, I went out for a midafternoon ski.

Retiring with a vengeance

Perhaps I should explain. I’m 66 years old and have been retired since 2009.  Prior to retirement, having recently left a toxic work environment, I toyed with the idea of continuing to work.  However, to do so would have meant losing my pension buy-back, which gives me an extra three years of freedom.  So I decided to make the jump into retirement.

That year was a big one for me. Between the months of August and October I retired after 36 years as a primary school English teacher and curriculum advisor in educational technology for primary and secondary levels as well as adult education; I sold my house and six acre farm; moved to a smaller but much newer house on the edge of the woods and closer to town; got married for the first time; turned 60; and started a three-year course that led me to become a relationship therapist.  One month later, I added a one-year theatre course with weekly classes. Two months later, I was on the board of directors for a community radio station that was facing bankruptcy, and nine months after my retirement, I was working part time as a project manager for a company helping small businesses write up tax credit claims for scientific research and experimental development. I set up my own small business, hauled out my painting materials again, and got involved in volunteer work, outdoor activities, and travelling. I even resurrected that novel that’s been sitting in a drawer since 1995.

I couldn’t wait to do those things I had held back on all those working years, to do things I had never before considered.  I moved into retirement with a vengeance.

My two free days

Yes, I’m into my seventh year of retirement and my much-loved wife, Danielle, is too.  Well, sort of, since she, too, is a part time relationship therapist.  The trouble is that at times I don’t feel retired.  In fact, in some ways, I’m not, because I work, self-employed, three days a week as a relationship therapist.  One of those days is spent at a resource centre for men where I give a series of 10 morning workshops on different themes related to the experience of senior men.  In the afternoons I am a volunteer therapist.  In addition, I’ve just been elected president of the board of directors of a provincial association of relationship therapists.  Often I feel squeezed because some of those responsibilities – continued training courses, requests to participate in a regional symposium, special committees or additional meetings, organizing our annual General Assembly, even learning accounting to be able to handle my initial mandate as the corporation’s treasurer – chew into the two free days.

And there is also the family, which has meant supporting adult children with difficulties, visiting my father and siblings in a neighbouring province, and, eventually, caring for my dying father.  Of course, there is a growing line of grandchildren, up to nine now since the twins joined the baseball team last October.  This means birthdays and party days, celebration days, sports days and babysitting days.  As a result, appointments – especially for weekends – must be marked well in advance on the calendar.  Sometimes that calendar seems rather squeezed, especially those two free days.

I can’t just complain though. We have enjoyed ourselves. We took a belated honeymoon to Mexico two years after our wedding.  We also sailed down the St. Lawrence in a container ship, straight into hurricane Leslie, and survived.  We spent two weeks in the Dominican Republic two winters ago.  I did a few training courses in video and sound recording.  We’ve also hidden ourselves away in different hotels here and there for a few getaway days, spas included, from time to time. Retirement allows me to do such things, as well as an hour of skiing in the middle of the afternoon.

Perfect timing of a perfect time

Well, here I am back at the beginning.  I’ve gotten a little off track but I’m used to that.  I have a slight attention deficit disorder.  So here’s where the ski outing mentioned earlier fits in.  I went to ski and to think about this article. I was part way down my newly forged trail when I noticed on a tree trunk a small fungus with a long pointed tuque of freshly fallen snow.  So I stopped to admire. I began to notice, though, that I wasn’t pondering nature; I was counting.  But counting what? There were no fence posts or hydro poles, there were no dotted lines, or highway mileage indicators.  I wasn’t in a hurry, just on an hour’s outing.

I had begun the outing by starting a fitness app on my cell phone that would log my time spent on the outing. Since I wanted the timing to be perfect, I was counting the number of seconds it was taking to store the phone in my pocket and to get my mitts on, so I could subtract those seconds from the total outing time. Why was I counting? It was either my ADHD or my obsessive-compulsive personality traits.  Whichever, I recognized that I wasn’t soaking in the exquisiteness of skiing on a beautiful, sunny afternoon.  I hadn’t fully appreciated that interesting brown-headed smurf-like fungus.

I had five kilometers of skiing to enjoy, but I was recording the time it took.  Why? To prove to myself that I’m still in shape, even though I’m 66?  Even if I’m retired and don’t have anything to prove? What does it mean that I am retired, but still working… working hard at getting things done, at being good at doing things?

Guess who I dragged into retirement?

The question becomes this: who did I drag into retirement?  Well, a dedicated, romantic guy who loves to be close to nature, but doesn’t always give himself the time to get there.  A man who looks at the world and the local community and tries to do a little to make things a bit better.  A guy who gets really involved and often has difficulty saying “No” or realizing that his “Yes” may involve a much greater involvement than is visible on the surface. It becomes obvious that I dragged into retirement the same person I always was.  I haven’t changed because I’m retired.  That’s not a magic metamorphosis date.  So I dragged ME into retirement; me, with my energy and drive, my acronyms (ADHD and OCD), my perfectionism, my elastic relationship to time and deadlines, my myriad interests, my big family, my desire to set up my own company, and my need for freedom to create, to write, to paint, and to make videos.

Freedom there is.  Obligations are also part of the picture.  It’s not seven days a week of holidays, even if I weren’t tied into my own choice of continuing to work part time. There is always the lawn to cut, snow to shovel, housekeeping, and projects.  However, the fun is in the process.  The doing is enjoyable… when there is not too much pressure.  We found it stimulating when we renovated the basement, working with the craftsmen to create a second bathroom and a consultant’s office.  Then, three years later we were at it again, turning a back shed into a second consultant’s office and studio for the budding artist.  The budding artist?  That’s me… once I get the time.

What I’ve learned skiing, and writing this, is that what is important for me is to find balance in my life.  I wasn’t able to do that back in my ‘working’ days, as an overachieving workaholic.  Then, as now, I found it difficult to strike a balance – to find time for myself, time off, time to stop and enjoy the wind puffing specks of snow off some woodland gnome. Time off track in my retirement is too often out of balance with my time on track.  I want to learn to explore life off the pre-set trail, where it’s unknown and just a little eerie, yet ultimately more my place, and my pace.   I might just give myself enough time to ski home slowly, the back way, before sundown.