Retirement: Where Did I Put My Future?

Feb 27, 2025

Image from Gemini AI

Retirement, like herpes or other sexually transmitted diseases, was never something I looked forward to.

I didn’t lament the long days. The endless commutes. The life-sucking conversations with a boss who lost his sense of humanity and replaced it with a balance sheet.

I just lived.

It seemed like the obvious choice, given the alternatives.

Retirement meant decades of my life would be behind me, growing smaller in the distance as I marched on toward an ending that was still vague and uncertain.

If I'm being honest, I was afraid of it. I was terrified at times, but I won‘t go there. That sort of terror should be reserved for life-threatening moments, like jumping out of an airplane and realizing you grabbed your lunch instead of the parachute.

You see, I was busily perfecting the ability to turn any sow’s ear into a silk purse, transforming the worst possible jobs into something graceful and tenable.

I was becoming a husband and father, and those two words had built into them some of the most resilient traits of humanity that we can aspire to.

So, when I wasn’t staring at an endless clog on the 405 Freeway, as the minutes of my life ticked away, thinking, God if you’re up there listening, seriously what did I ever do to piss you off, I did what I always did.

I took one step and then the next. I worked. I laughed, when at all possible. And when others didn’t provide the humor, I needed to sustain life, I created it on my own.

I looked into a future that was populated with more of the same and said (inside my head) fuck it, I can do better than that.

It didn’t always work though. I wasn’t always convinced that the future, my future would be better, happier, or more fulfilling. That’s why WORK became so important.

It was the daily equivalent of hubby shouting – Look at me honey, that’s it, look at me and keep breathing – while his wife pushed out a child and looked daggers at the world.

It kept me sane. It kept me focused.

But not always on something I loved doing.

Come on people, seriously, we’re talking about the real world here. The world where taxes and deductions live. Where bills creep into the house through cracks in the basement windows and arguments were something we never looked forward to, but knew were coming, like Flu season.

I focused on the details. On the phone calls and making the deal. On turning a bad month or bad year into the best year ever and taking home that 3-digit bonus in an envelope that had been used once before.

It was life. And it was never tasked with making me happy. That was my job. It’s in the fine print. Read it.

So, retirement came as a shock. The sudden withdrawal of prediction and purpose left me unprepared. And like a badly timed high tide, it allowed life to rush in all at once, overwhelming me.

And before anyone gets the idea, Christ where’s the exit, retirement can also be a blessing. Really.

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I found it to be a blank canvas, a neat little metaphor with some hope factored into it. But for others, if they were good planners, a canvas that was already partially filled in.

The outline of a good life already there. The productive morning walks and weekends dining with friends, all creating a picture that looked pretty cool.

But I was often too busy in the past to sketch even a basic outline of what my retirement would look like. Raising a family and using work to keep the demons off my back and the worries out of my head took priority.

So, when it finally arrived, that blank canvas looked a little frightening to me.

Like a map that I finally got to unfold only to find there was nothing on it, nothing at all except the words:

You Are Here!

But after six months or so, I realized it wasn’t “work” that had kept me going after all because there were so many different kinds, and no one job stood out, that really made a difference. It was all in my head anyway. In other words, how did I view what I was doing? Good or bad?

And all I had to do and it may sound too easy, but it wasn’t, trust me – was redefine it.

It’s something the world was doing at a mad rate anyway, so it fitted right in.

I redefined what work was.

For me, work meant money. Income over debts so that life could take place in the gaps in between. It meant vacations and college. Patio furniture and a second car, maybe a pick-up that could be used to haul shit in, even if I didn’t have much of it anymore.

It meant keeping busy and staying purposeful. Being honest about what productivity actually means, regardless of what the efficiency experts had said and I promptly ignored.

In the end, it meant staying interested. Holding onto a sense of fulfillment. Or helping others and being of use.

Or getting really good at doing nothing and finally feeling okay about it.

What I did lament all those years ago, all the way up through 2023, was the time I spent on everything but me. Not my goals, dreams, and ambitions.

Now I thought, was the time to wake up, have breakfast. Slip into some nice shorts, a new pair of sneakers and head downstairs into the study to spend a day doing me.

Thinking me. Feeling me.

And it’s working. Slowly.

I still pace and get anxious. I still look out the window at my car, parked quietly in the driveway, not doing what we did together for over 250,000 miles, and get a little teary-eyed, for ten seconds and then snap out of it.

I grab a broom and sweep up the leaves that my two elms trees seem to produce at an alarming rate. Or go to the store and get milk, figs, or a large box of sustainable tissues made from recycled packaging delivered by the trillions in Amazon trucks.

I redefined what life meant.

Sure, things get in the way. Like politics and news and weird changes that rise out of the inner muck and mire of some madman’s dreams, but there’s a solution for that as well.

I put my phone in my wife’s intimate’s drawer where I seldom venture. I got faster at muting stuff on TV and practiced using the Time Out gesture with two hands, so I could cut off friends wanting to discuss what they just heard on C-SPAN.

It’s not exactly burying my head in the sand, that won’t work either. But it does help reduce the dissonance in life, which is one of those things retirement is supposed to be all about.