April 7, 2002

Retirement Sunday

I retired last June after a career of 33 years, spread across eight communities in three provinces. A few weeks ago, my wife Anne decided that she too would retire, next June. So, to turn the old expression around, it will be "twice as much wife, half as much money."

I spent the last 12 of these years here at the University of Toronto. I could have retired a couple of years earlier, but I could have worked many years longer if I had so chosen. I looked at some of my colleagues who had no discernable life outside their careers, and who were afraid to retire. I also saw a few go into the grave within a year or two of a relatively late and unwelcome retirement. I decided that wasn’t for me. Just this past Thursday a good friend died at work, of a massive heart attack.

If you look at retirement as taking back control of your life, then I began the process many years ago. Obviously, I have not yet completed it, or I wouldn’t have been so pressed for time to write this. But, some 20 years ago, I developed the habit of keeping track of my time, how much I worked, on what project, and so on. This had an important consequence; it showed me that I was working too much, so much in fact that it was affecting the rest of my life. So I started the process of at least systematically noting how much I worked in the early 1980s. I didn’t take to heart the importance of saying "no" until maybe 1990, but it was a start.

My working life was like most interesting, open-ended jobs. There were things that clearly had to be done – in my case, classes to teach, students to supervise, research to do. But what made the job interesting was also what made it so consuming – always an indeterminate list of stuff to read, articles to write, projects to get involved in. I had lots of stuff I wanted to do that was outside my job. I just couldn’t get around to everything. I think that was the real reason I retired, to get away from the open-ended to-do list.

When I decided I wanted to retire, I didn’t want to stop working, I just wanted to slow down, and do some things a bit differently. In an ideal retirement, I wanted to work maybe 2/3 time the first year, half time the second year, and then re-assess how I felt about things. I was lucky enough to be retiring in a period of faculty shortages, so U of T was happy to have me continue teaching a bit. This appealed to me because I didn’t want to be idle, but most importantly because it was confined: show up, teach, chat with the students, grade their work. Very appealing. In addition to this, I had time to take on other projects, working for clients I had come to know over the course of my career. It was rewarding to know that people outside the ivory tower would actually pay me to do stuff.

This looked great last spring – a chance to drop the open-ended to-do list, teach a bit, ply my trade as it were, and ease out. So, how did it work out? Well, the first thing I did last July was set up a schedule. It was my fun things to-do list. I didn’t want to wake up one morning with no plan. I wasn’t ready to just let things happen.

I needn’t have worried. I quickly found that I didn’t have time for my schedule, and, surprisingly, that I wasn’t that committed to a lot of it. The idea of finally learning some music theory in a systematic way was great for a few weeks, 20 minutes a day, but it swiftly fell to the bottom of the priority list. The idea of finally getting serious about the guitar suffered the same fate. Over the summer and early fall, however, I did train myself out of needing to have a plan all the time. I started to become comfortable with "nothing time" – not a lot of it, but a few hours a day.

As for not having time for my schedule, I’m a bit like the man sitting on a block of ice with his head in the oven. On the average, I’m quite comfortable (I teach statistics, by the way). Working an average of 2/3 time means, in practice, that I work full-time and sometimes more for a while, and then I have lots of free time for a while. For most of the fall, things were very smooth. I had stuff to do and I was comfortable with a modest amount of free time. A project that was to happen in November got delayed until January, and then come January, I found myself working just about full time, until this very week. The effect of this was to make me once again uncomfortable with "nothing time." I lost my edge, my hard won retirement skills! As it happened, I managed to meet a couple of big deadlines recently, and Tuesday this week, I woke up determined to be relaxed (!!) and have some fun. So, I went for a bike ride, got caught in the snow, got soaked. I thought my toes would break off. I’m back on the program again, to learn to be retired.

In writing this, I’ve come to realize something about myself. I rarely do anything just for fun. I waste time; I have naps and watch TV, and lots of things I do are fun, but I also want to get better! I sing because I want to be a better singer. A bicycle ride is a training run. I don’t think I can drop that part of me; it’s what made me successful. I look at my children and marvel at how close to the tree the acorn falls; it is making them successful too. To be a good retiree, do I have to let go of the idea of bettering myself? Or if I drop that, is it the beginning of the end? I honestly don’t know. There’s an old adage about retirement; that you have to stop defining yourself in terms of your career. But it’s more than that. Even in the rest of your life, how do you stop defining yourself in terms of what you accomplish?

There’s another part of this I haven’t yet faced. I’ve been very fortunate so far. I have someone to share my retirement with, I’m healthy, and I have enough money. I need to give back in some substantial way. I don’t mean serving on a church committee or two. I’ve done that, it’s been fun; I’ll do it again. I mean substantial – well, I don’t know what I mean. I have to deal with the fact that, if people are willing to pay me for my skills and time, it’s going to be difficult to give that time and those skills away. You can work for pay or you can work for free – which do you prefer?

It’s taken me these ten months to start to figure out what’s involved in the process of becoming retired. It’s only in the last week that I’ve realized the need to confront giving back. I guess that’ll be my next retirement project; I’ll put it on my list.

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