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Retirement Isn't Just a Date — It's a New Life
By Ron Schoolmeester, USA TODAY
November 23, 2004
By Todd Plitt, USA TODAY
"Even if I sit home and do nothing, it's a great day," says retired teacher Marlyn Lawrence, 56.
Carol Wobser is trying to guard against being stuck at the end of her cul-de-sac in Cincinnati.
Mark and Janet Skeie of Lake Elmo, Minn., a suburb of the Twin Cities, are making peace with what Mark calls their "loss of identity."
And Ian Carr of Windsor, Ontario, says he just wants to "give this thing a little bit of time to see how it plays out."
Wobser, the Skeies and Carr are recent retirees. Before calling it quits, they took a hard look at their finances and concluded they had enough money to see themselves through the years ahead. But now they're facing a whole different, more ambiguous task — taking stock of their mental and emotional readiness for retirement — and they're wondering: Am I really prepared for this?
"We didn't realize what we were getting into from a psychological standpoint until we got into it," Mark Skeie says. "There's really not much out there to guide people through the process."
Nancy Schlossberg, a psychologist who interviewed nearly 100 current and prospective retirees for her book Retire Smart, Retire Happy: Finding Your True Path in Life, says, "The biggest mistake people make is not realizing there's a psychological component to retirement."
Her words, along with those of other experts and the experiences of people who have already made the change, are particularly pertinent to the first wave of the nearly 77 million baby boomers now on the cusp of their 60s and facing the sometimes frightening idea of leaving the workplace. (Related story: Know your potential — and beware 'catastrophizing')
"One reason the transition can be difficult for some people is that retirement really is not one, but many, transitions," Schlossberg says. "Our work, after all, gives us an identity. It maps out our routines, our relationships. Work very often is, in effect, our community. So leaving a job is a lot more than just ceasing work.
"Sometimes just knowing that it's not all going to come together immediately — there's a comfort in that."
Take, for example, Mark and Janet Skeie. Both were 56 when they took early retirement in September 2003 — he from a management job at 3M and she from a small branch office of General Reinsurance. Overall, their transition has been successful, but it has taken a while.
"We went from a very structured world — a world really that had been structured since we were in kindergarten — to one in which the structure almost totally disappeared. You have to have a lot of discipline to manage the time and space without just idling away the days," Mark says.
"You know, you can only do so many loads of laundry," Janet quips.
To fill the void, both took up walking up to 3 miles a day. Mark also got involved with a senior advocacy program at the University of Minnesota, where he's putting together a pre-retirement planning program for people who, he says, "need to understand all aspects of the change." Janet is volunteering at schools and the library, and has become an avid cook.
"We've had friends over who have asked, 'Do you eat this way all the time?' " Mark jokes. "And I say, 'Yes, that's why we walk so much.' "
Working through goals
While the Skeies have been hoofing it, Carr, 58, who retired in June after 40 years with the Ford Motor Co., has taken up bicycling. "Just finished my goal of riding 100 miles," he says. "In retirement, that's necessary: to set goals, even little goals, whatever they are."
Wobser, 60, also retired in June, after 31 years of teaching in Ohio. "One of the first things I told myself was, 'Don't let yourself get stuck at the end of that cul-de-sac.' " She's resolute in maintaining relationships with the teachers she worked with in suburban Cincinnati, but admits she needs to make new friends outside her former workplace.
Mark and Janet Skeie have done exactly that. "We've met a really neat group of people through different organizations in which we've become active," Mark says. "I still golf occasionally with a couple of my former colleagues from work. But it's not the same without the constant, day-to-day interaction. And as the year has gone on, we've noticed there's a waning and lessening of those contacts."
Replacing work colleagues with another network is just one of several pieces of advice from experts on how to make the transition successfully. Getting involved with something meaningful is another.
Schlossberg says she had an identity crisis of sorts when she retired from teaching at the University of Maryland in 1996.
"Frankly, it took me a while," she says. "I needed to get over the fact that I was no longer a college professor. And it nearly gagged me to say I was 'retired.' One of the reasons I wrote my book is that it gave me a chance to take a hard look at the issues I was dealing with personally.
"Since then, I've got involved in several organizations — a repertory theater group in Sarasota (where she and her husband now spend most of the year), then developing programs for the public library — eventually joining the boards of directors for both. I would never have predicted that I'd be on the boards of a repertory theater and a library."
Which brings up the question: Is it really a good idea to rely on serendipity when going into retirement? Wouldn't it be better to have a solid plan?
"Well, yes," Schlossberg says. "But, really, most people don't have plans. The exciting thing about retirement is fantasizing, then letting things evolve."
Gene Cohen, director of the Center on Aging, Health and Humanities at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and author of The Creative Age: Awakening Human Potential in the Second Half of Life, agrees — at least to a point. He has been studying 100 people age 60 and up, retired or partly retired, and says fewer than 10% had any preparation on how to spend their time.
"Fortunately, in the beginning, most of these people are happy to have a change. It's like a sabbatical. But then it begins to wear off."
He emphasizes the importance of remaining open to possibilities.
"You have to differentiate between having a plan and doing an exploration," he says. "You may not be ready to make a plan, but knowing what's out there helps ground you better. You spend less time stumbling around until you stumble onto something that gives you some measure of fulfillment."
Cohen and Schlossberg compare retirees to people of another generation they know well: college students.
"Think of it (retirement) like career development, like college," Schlossberg says. "Some kids come to college and know what they want to do. But many don't. They go through a searching period. Same with retirees."
Adds Cohen: "Students often don't know what their major is going to be, but they want to expose themselves to new things. And I think you want to approach retirement in the same way: It's a new period that is very liberating."
'I went nuts'
Tatiana Yates, 73, of Albany, Calif., felt anything but liberated after retiring from 26 years with the Social Security Administration. Most of those years were in Buffalo, but she relocated to a field office in San Leandro, Calif., to be near her two children and seven grandchildren in 1997, three years before she called it quits.
"I was home for six weeks and went nuts," she says. "I hadn't lived here (in northern California) long enough to know many people, so I didn't have anybody to play with. There are only so many novels you want to read, so many TV shows you want to watch, so many walks you want to take.
"I told myself, 'I've just got to do something else.' "
That "something else" turned out to be ferrying around her grandchildren and picking up a few bucks as a record keeper for the chess program at a local school. "You know, keeping track of who's signed up, who's paid, who's not paid — that kind of stuff. Nothing too cerebral."
"Work," she insists, "is a bad habit."
Not so for Marlyn Lawrence, 56, who retired a year ago after 35 years with the New York City school system. "My attitude is, every day is a good day," she says. "Even if I sit home and do nothing, it's a great day."
Not that she sits home that much. She sees friends and family often, reads fiction and, for the first time in years, took a vacation — a luxury cruise to the Baltic. "Vacations are wonderful — what a revelation!" she exclaims.
And about that loss of identity?
"When you work in a field — in my case, education — everything was a big deal for those of us in that little circle. But outside the circle, it's all caca. Nobody knows who those people are, and, frankly, nobody cares.
"I was always sort of able to make the distinction between what I was doing and how important it was in context, and then in the larger picture," she says. "If you can't do that, retirement could be very difficult."
Howard Stone, 69, of East Greenwich, R.I., says the whole idea of retirement should be retired. He says he "transitioned" seven years ago from managing trade publications for the food service industry to become a life coach.
"As you move from one industry to another, no matter how much the people there admired or relied upon you, they move on without you," he says. "I didn't realize it then, but I was dispensable. And that's fine because I feel a meaning, a purpose, in what I'm doing now."
101 alternative jobs
Stone and his wife, Marika, 62, are the authors of Too Young to Retire: 101 Ways to Start the Rest of Your Life, which helps provide a road map for the 50-plus crowd who might be asking, "What next?" The 101 ideas vary from animal handler to yoga teacher. Almost anything but "retiree."
"Retirement," Howard says, "doesn't belong in our culture. It's a negative.
The American dream, I think, is work that you love, a community that you love, and having time around that to be entertained, to have some leisure, to have some equilibrium among all those things — not to just go off and disappear."
And what about those who might come to the same conclusion after they have already retired?
"There are people in my study who are in their 80s and re-examining their options," Cohen says. "It's never too late."
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