I’ve been talking about retirement for what seems to be an eternity. Recently, it seems to infiltrate almost every conversation I have. For years, it’s been the subject of the long, drawn out countdown to the end of my career as a high school dance, theater and PE teacher. It makes good fodder for conversation.
I even put a countdown widget on my phone’s homescreen. Am I a little obsessed? Sure. And that’s just fine with me.
Practicing retirement
I started writing this post in mid-summer. It’s the time of my year that feels like “practice retirement.” With each passing day, I think about ramping things up and preparing for another 184 days of school-related stuff, and I feel the familiar anxiety that I keep trying to tamp down in exchange for two quiet months of simplicity and recovery. It’s happened every summer for thirty years.
And now, I’m feeling it one more time.
I realize that my decision to close this chapter out on July 1, 2027 is the right one. Much as I love the teaching aspect of my job, the professional development, planning and staying on top of fifty different things part of the job stresses me out. And, as a woman in my mid-fifties, I’m trying to simplify and de-stress my life. I just don’t want to feel the ongoing, unwavering level of pummeling to my nervous system anymore. Life’s too short.
I feel a visceral need to release myself from the rigid schedule that being a public school educator demands. I want to be concerned with other things.
Countdown to “me time”
That said, I do experience the internal reality check of “what the heck are you going to do with all that time?”
My immediate answer is, anything I want. That’s great on the surface, but there are parts of me that are genuinely concerned about not having a regular schedule to guide my sense of time. After all, I’ve been bound to the wake at 5:30 am, leave at 7:00 am, go home at 4:00 pm, in bed at 10:30 pm schedule for decades. That’s a habit that’s been ingrained ten months of the year for thirty years.
Summer gives me a brief respite from the demands of that schedule. It takes some adjustment to sleep later, rest more, focus on exercise and prioritize the “me time” part of the year. But when August comes, I am hyperaware of the impending locking back into the grind. Knowing that, it’s hard to keep my brain in rest mode.
And that’s where the educator weariness emerges. Never fully resting makes it harder to get back to it year after year. My endurance for that pattern is starting to show wear and tear.
On September 1, I’ll be locking in again, just one more time. One more first day of school. One more set of new students. One more first Thespian meeting and fall show auditions. One more musical. One more dance concert. I’m trying to be mindful of how that feels. To be honest, I’m not sure. It’s a smudgy feeling. Because after all of those last-firsts are done, and next summer passes through, I’ll have a new set of firsts to look forward to.
The prospect of closing out this career chapter is both exciting and daunting.
Ruminations of open space
I mentioned the idea that my school schedule is my current driver of self-regulation. So what happens when that school schedule is no longer dictating my daily life? When September 1 comes rolling around after next summer, what will the days and weeks look like?
On one hand, when my time is my own, I’ll have the space to do whatever I need or want. At least, my work schedule won’t be in the way of taking care of other business. Sure, there’s family, pets, health obstacles that might crop up. But it’s the “life stuff” that I always feel has taken a backseat to the fact that I need to be at work and take care of school business.
Sure, I’ve always had the flexibility to “drop and run” if I needed to. But taking a few days off to breathe and take care of personal life stuff has always felt like a major conflict. I can’t just go somewhere without worrying about abandoning my students in some crucial part of the school year. I never liked that part of my career.
I’m happy to give myself the open space to fill up. I like the idea of having the whatever, whenever I choose available to me.
On the other hand, having that much space is also emotionally overwhelming, if I’m being honest. Sometimes, when I have summer days with nothing on the calendar, I get an uneasy sense that I should be doing something. I have to actually tell myself that it’s okay to have nothing specific to do. Often, I’ll start cleaning something, or finding little things in the house to organize or declutter. Even if it’s for a hour or two, at least I’ll feel productive before I sit.
The very knowledge that I’ll be back on a schedule in a few weeks means that I can more easily give myself a pass during the summer months. Do a project, then sit and doomscroll. Go to gymnastics then sit on the hammock. Have lunch with a friend and then sit on the couch and do a crossword puzzle. Sit and write for hours. Sing.
Summer is about vacation. September is about business. What happens when that’s not the case anymore? What happens when/if there is endless open space?
Ruminations of well-being
Then, there’s the worry about health and wellness. Age and retirement is often associated with the breakdown of the body and mind. When people have too much idle time and lack regular connection to others, things can go downhill quickly. And while I do enjoy spending time with others, my introverted nature sometimes holds me back from reaching out.
My husband and I spend so much time tweaking our health habits so we go into our retirement years strong, healthy and ultimately, independent. Heck, I just ordered a dual-user blood pressure cuff for us to share and track our results. What if there’s something lurking that we haven’t caught?
Yes, my brain does go there. Sometimes, it’s really disturbing.
Moving away from the morbid ruminations, I’m trying to keep my headspace rooted in optimism. It’s less healthy to become obsessive about things that haven’t happened and may never happen. And, it’s very easy to go down that path when you don’t have structure to follow.
What do I want?
When retirement comes, and I have the time for “my choice” stuff, I sometimes wonder what that’s going to look like. I think it’s the figuring out what it is that I want that I struggle with most.
I think it is important, when you’re looking towards a major life shift, to define what you want. Big things, small things, doesn’t matter. Saying it out loud helps to structure where to put energy and focus when there’s an open calendar.
Here’s my list of “wants”:
- I want to be creative and make things.
- I want to work with people, in creative ways.
- I want to explore music, writing, and maintain my websites and blogs.
- I want to be active and keep this midlife body in peak form for the next five decades.
- I want to learn new gymnastics skills.
- I want to spend time traveling with my husband and feel the freedom and awe of being in a strange and wonderful place together.
- I want to sing for audiences and maybe be in a show instead of directing one.
- I want to publish the books that are sitting in my computer.
What will all that look like? I have no idea yet. The reality is, it doesn’t matter that I don’t know yet, because I’m not there yet.
What matters is that the list is reflective of the interests that I’ve already been cultivating. When the time comes, I’ll have more time to expand upon them and see what new doors open up for me to step through. The “not knowing what” is the fuel for taking action on manifesting any of those interests.
I believe that one opportunity that arises will naturally lead to the next. The proof, to me, is that is the way things have gone with my life and career so far. My career exists now because my dad’s friend Syd was looking for a new theater director and I got a phone call because the current theater director knew a music director that I had just worked with and suggested they give me a call. I got my foot in the door and the rest just sort of unfolded from there. That’s a whole other story to be told.
Hedging my bets, a wide variety of interests gives me the best chance for a new door to open. In the meantime, I’ll have to keep the control-freak part of my nature at bay. I won’t have the answers or the structure set on September 1, 2027. For the most part, I’m okay with that.
Ultimately, I’ve had a lot of practice being mentally flexible and I’d like to have one beginning of September with not much to do.
Staying present
For now, I’ll put my teacher hat back on once more. I want to enjoy my year of last firsts and first lasts. I’ve been working hard to prepare my students and colleagues for the end of the upcoming year. Saying it out loud has been a good way to prepare myself for it.
The more I talk about it, the more accepting I’ll be of the reality that I’m walking away from my greatest career move when June rolls around.
To be continued…
What did you think?