Tag: retirement

Are There Only Endings? Or Are They Actually New Beginnings

As the old year ends and a new one begins it occurred to me we experience a great many endings as we move through life.

Since many of these are not of our choosing, man in his desire to make the unpleasant more palatable created a refrain to serve these occasions.

“When one door closes another opens.”

I imagine there aren’t too many of us that has not spoken those words to ease the disappointment of a favored activity, job or life experience suddenly coming to an end.

What I myself have found is that many of these endings come not at our choosing but at the whim of others.

Many times this circumstance leaves us standing shocked or surprised and in need of believing it’s all for the best.

Yet is it really? Always for the best I mean.

When something we’ve enjoyed doing for years is suddenly removed from our lives. Is it best that we are left with a big gaping hole where that positive energy once lived?

Can we always find a substitution for the moments we so enjoyed that are now stripped from our routines?

A friend is retiring from teaching now after fifty years and boy it’s not looking very easy.

She is finding as with everything filling gaps seems to be so much easier when you’re young. I imagine this is because opportunities arise more often when you are strong and vital.

Filling a gap in one’s life isn’t hard when the world is open and filled with untold adventures ahead.

But when you’re older, maybe not so much.

When you’ve had moments you looked forward to and enjoyed stripped away through no choice of your own, replenishing them can be tricky.

So we are left with a hole where fun and joy once dwelled now covered over by only a memory.

In the beginning optimism enters like a shoulder to cry on. Oh well, I suppose it’s time to move on. Nothing lasts forever and everything happens for the good.

But does it really? Especially when you’re older and finding ways to fill our days may not be as easy or productive despite how much we try.

The last thing we want to do is allow the feeling of negativity to enter where that positive energy once flowed. To feel that a treasured job or activity that brought us such joy is now gone and something has left us that cannot be replaced.

That feeling of loss is what we must rail against. So is replacing what we once had the only way to restore joy to our lives?

Is losing that job or activity going to linger and create a bad memory after so many years of cultivating good ones?

Do we want to be left in the end with only the loss and not all the years of gain?

Many times it’s not about money.  It’s about feeling useful or positive about something. It may be a hobby that makes you feel a sense of accomplishment.

So we sit and ponder what might fill that gap. What do we need to do to feel those useful or satisfied feelings once more?

Is there anything that can bring back what is now lost?

How do we find that perfect replacement?

I’ve thought long and hard at these times about what to do next. What opportunities are open to me at the stage of life where I am now.

As we reach a certain age we all come face to face with certain facts about our existence. Our skills in certain areas have kind of cast us out of professions we may once have considered, even part time.

Let’s face it, the world changes as we trudge along. Sure we do our best to keep up, but sadly keeping up is not excelling.

We use our Iphones and computers with a sense of pride that we were able to adapt to this new technology, but would Google or Apple or any of the other companies that are now running the world employ us? Or would we even have a clue what they are all about?

I’m thinking a big no on that one. Ordering from Amazon is not the same level as inventing the next big thing in Virtual Reality beyond Oculus.

Believe me I’m not suggesting jobs are an issue for Baby Boomers. Most of us have retired or work part time as a hobby. This is about the things we found that fill our time once we left the workforce. The choices we made that we now don’t want to lose.

What can we do if anything to change the outcome of decisions made for us instead of with us?

No one can argue that life has many potholes in the roads we travel.

So what do we do when we hit one we didn’t see coming?

Do we lie there in the road and stop moving? Or do we call a tow truck, fix the car and keep driving?

Yet if we can choose, why wouldn’t we?

Exhausting all efforts to save what means something to us is paramount and the easiest way to move forward.

Despite the immediate feeling of loss, setting new goals will turn into a positive outcome.

I always felt that staring at a brick wall, we miss seeing the open path at our side. Although challenging, freeing up time to bring more interesting and fun things into our day can prove to be very positive indeed. It just takes a bit of effort but the rewards are plentiful.

So if a door closes, turn your head and feel the breeze blowing on you from that newly opened window.

In the new year I hope all your moments are filled with only good things and open windows galore.

Riding the Guilt Train at a Senior Discount

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Riding the Guilt Train at a Senior Discount

Why do I feel guilty for doing nothing? By doing nothing I don’t mean doing nothing to feel guilty about, I mean nothing in the purest sense of the world.

Like sitting like a couch potato staring at the television and eating a nacho kind of nothing.

I can’t seem to reconcile getting through a day without accomplishing something. I’m not quite certain if it’s my type A personality or just the DNA in my bloodstream from years of Jewish guilt.

Whatever the case I can’t go to bed at night feeling good without knowing what tasks I undertook and succeeded at that day.

So I imagine the question would be: what is an accomplishment?

Aha. There’s the rub, for at various stages of our lives the word task morphs into far different meanings.

When young a task might be doing homework, making your bed or taking out the garbage. We never considered reading a book, playing outside until the streetlights came on or buying a new comic book part of the task category. Those things were the fun things we did, the parts of our lives we felt total control over.

Then we became older and a task was far more defined. In college we did our homework, studied for exams, did philanthropic activities with our sororities and left ourselves time for the fun stuff like catching up with our favorite soap opera, partying, watching Charlie Brown specials and listening to music while we danced around the dorm. There was a definite disconnection between fun and work and we felt the difference as we accomplished both.

Marriage and children brought even more awareness of the lines between pleasure and production although our underlying motivations were slightly blurred.

Changing our baby’s diaper was work yet it was done with love. So there was that, a whole love work conundrum.

Of course housework, carpooling, shopping or cooking were all things a Mom undertook with love and tolerance because our choices to raise our family had been conscious and resolute.

Some of us worked outside the house as well and at times the work felt less like work and more like fun. At least it did for me when I was doing stand-up comedy.

The point to all this is the fact that we were all productive. Our days were filled with responsibilities that needed to be met and loved ones to care for as the days passed quickly by.

At night we didn’t ever wonder, “what did I accomplish today?”

We were too damn tired and our heads were usually swimming with thoughts of what we had to do the next day.

It was a far different time.

And now here we are at a very different point in our lives.

Most of us, and I can’t speak for all of course, but many have chosen to slow life down a bit. Like a horse that used to run races and now sort of wanders about the fields sniffing the clover and munching on hay, and if he’s lucky gets put out to stud occasionally.

Some still have significant others and husbands (I am in no way implying that a husband is not significant here) so we do have another person in our lives to answer to.

However, there are those who do not.

I no longer have to worry about meals. I can eat what I want, when I want.

I work part time at my own pace so I needn’t be so strict about that any longer.

Hmm. So what is there that I absolutely need to do now?

And I am not certain if playing maj jong is considered a task or fun as at times the lines have now completely blurred from simply okay-so-I’m-getting-out-of-bed this morning, to healing the oceans.

I’m brutally honest with myself, I can’t retire as I’d be bored out of my skull with nothing to do. I envy those who can retire, but are they really?

What is retirement?

Does that mean sitting idol all day or perhaps running from doctor appointment to appointment as part of the weekly routine. No, I’m not sure if those visits to the doctor count as work or pleasure. I guess we should invent a new category for that one. Perhaps pain in the butt would be applicable.

Some golf, the healthy ones tennis, swim, play canasta, hang with friends, maj jong, go to the gym, meet friends for lunch, write that screenplay or novel, volunteer for charities, see the grandchildren and all of the many things one can do to fill time.

Although we take on tasks each day, for me it has changed a bit. Where once I could get up in the morning and clean all day, now, I merely take on a chore at a time with even a respite in between.

However, I need to do something, anything to make me feel as if I’ve accomplished something.

For me it is a necessity and I feel incredible guilty if I have ended a day without being productive.

So let’s examine what is considered productive.

Could one consider binge watching the entire season of Mrs. Maisel or Grace and Frankie productive?

Is cleaning a drawer or your closet?

How about writing a blog?

Can I sneak in maj jong under than heading?

Is it perfectly okay to count going to the gym as a positive day?

Case in point: Would you consider sitting in front of the television all day binge watching NCIS productive? I’m not going to argue the benefits of looking at Mark Harmon for eight hours although I can see no downside there. I merely wonder if I should feel guilty because I didn’t invent the cure for cancer instead? Is having a non-productive day and merely enjoying oneself a bad thing? What is truly beneficial as an activity?

As we age shouldn’t we be grateful we are able to function, walk, talk, enjoy our children and grandchildren? Isn’t contentment and gratitude a goal; a benefit of being alive?

Where once we sought more days to spend on pleasurable uses of our time, now we are blessed with scads of it. Is taking advantage of those hours not okay?

Should one feel guilty about simply enjoying doing nothing in particular?

I still have problems justifying 24 hours without producing something, whether it be a blog, a cleaner house, a charitable endeavor or even a new recipe.

So I have found a way around this conundrum.

Each day I find one thing to do that I can feel is going to result in something positive.

So I blog, fix something, work on a project or charity, call a friend, or even just catch up on housework. Then after that I can feel good about my time with Harmon or binge watching Mad Men, which a friend has been urging me to do. So in a way this is very productive because I’m making my friend happy by simply watching the show. Two birds huh?

I once saw Joan Rivers open her date book and point to empty pages and tell the interviewer, “This is what terrifies me.”

Right on Joan, Having nothing to do terrifies me, also.

Yet, there are still those lazy days, but what the heck? I intend to live them guilt free and with no remorse.

At the end of our lives when we are faced with that flashback of our existence on earth will it be the individual moments we see or the totality of our achievements? Our children, grandchildren, the love we gave and received and the loved ones standing beside us to guide us into the next great adventure?

I imagine I won’t care at that moment how many days I just binge watched Netflix or chatted on the phone with a friend in lieu of saving the world. Hopefully I’ll just be grateful for all the moments I spent on this crazy ball spinning in space and sorry to have to leave.