As I mentioned yesterday, I’m doing a “content” review of my websites to see if there are areas I should be expanding or contracting, comparing them to other blogs and posts that are out there. I would like to do more on retirement as I transition out of the public service, but I am always conscious of my voice. What do I bring to the discussion that others might not?

One area that I’m interested in is the psychology of retirement. Topics such as how people mentally prepare for retirement, how they frame the decision…do they see it as parole from a long jail sentence or graduation from a long tenured role or simply a celebration of their past accomplishments? Is it a transition — both sweet and sad — as they say goodbye to one domain and hello to another?

Oddly enough, despite my normal types of blogs, I have no interest in blogging about “the how” of retirement. I don’t want to talk about finances or pensions or forms or anything like that. I am interested in the experience, not the process. There are far better people out there on process. If it was something people did regularly, a transition that occurred such as you would experience changing departments, it might interest me. One-offs? Not so much.

As I started looking at some of the blogs that were out there, I found a lot about social security, Medicare in the US. OAS and CPP, etc., none of which are particularly of interest to me as a blogger. Instead, most of what I found that might be anywhere near my style is more that of long-form essayists building frames than bloggers dashing off quick hits.

The wish that was

It doesn’t take long in this space to come across the late Ronni Bennett (Time Goes By). Alas, she passed away in 2020, apparently, and her archived website is now triggering phishing warnings in two different security software programs that I’m running. No worries, there are LOTS of other essays she wrote in other sites, and they’re all good. I almost wish I was looking for stuff ten years ago and could have found her stuff as it was being published. Alas, ten years ago, I wouldn’t have appreciated it as much. And yet, reading back to a post (through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine) she wrote on June 15, 2020 (coincidentally my birthday of the year in which the world shut down):

I have always used writing to figure out what I think or believe and at this stage, there is a diminishing number of productive hours in a day. So here we are – an exercise in working out my thoughts and a blog post, all in one.

This was part of her Crabby Old Lady persona posts, and included the news that she was within the last six months to go. Short. Poignant. Resonance. A glimpse inside a heart as it actively beats, reverberating loudly in the quiet and increasing darkness. One can aspire to such beauty.

Wisdom of (an individual in) the crowd

Sara Botton runs the Oldster Magazine site, which is more of a digital collection than a traditional magazine, focusing on people aging, at whatever age. How we live, how we die, and everything in between. She has taken a structured approach to interviewing lots of famous people with a subversive “questionnaire”. Some questions resonate with one interviewee, some with another.

1. How old are you?
2. Is there another age you associate with yourself in your mind? If so, what is it? And why, do you think?
3. Do you feel old for your age? Young for your age? Just right? Are you in step with your peers?
4. What do you like about being your age?
5. What is difficult about being your age?
6. What is surprising about being your age, or different from what you expected, based on what you were told?
7. What has aging given you? Taken away from you?
8. How has getting older affected your sense of yourself, or your identity?
9. What are some age-related milestones you are looking forward to? Or ones you “missed,” and might try to reach later, off-schedule, according to our culture and its expectations?
10. What has been your favorite age so far, and why? Would you go back to this age if you could?
11. Is there someone who is older than you, who makes growing older inspiring to you? Who is your aging idol and why?
12. What aging-related adjustments have you recently made, style-wise, beauty-wise, health-wise?
13. What’s an aging-related adjustment you refuse to make, and why?
14. What’s your philosophy on celebrating birthdays as an adult? How do you celebrate yours?

Do you see what’s NOT in that list? Anything about retirement, work, money, marriage, children, regrets, death, etc. It’s not about benchmarks or hallmarks, it’s about how you feel right now. That’s kind of powerful.

For me, I’d be more interested in how people approached retirement (expectations), what it was like (voluntary or not, reality of process), negative “outcomes” you sought to avoid, stuff you miss and stuff you are glad to have gone, what does busy look like in your life now, current source of purpose, how have your friends group shifted if at all, any milestones you look forward to or dread, etc.

I could create my own questionnaire of sorts, I suppose. And I’d love to have such conversations with people. Something to think about.

Long-form essayists

Anne Lamott is more familiar to me for writing advice than for the long essays in Hallelujah, Anyway (on Substack) or the numerous books on faith, hope, etc. I have not seen her life-stage focus, or at least, I’ve never noticed it. Not quite a voice I would emulate, however beautiful and lyrical the prose. I admire the voice, but I don’t want to sing like her.

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot’s work on the “third chapter” of life (ages 50-75) has been nothing short of groundbreaking, shifting the paradigm toward more productive conversations beyond retirement, slowing down, and/or declining health. I’ve added her books to my reading list (The Third Chapter, 2009; Exit, 2012; and Growing Each Other Up, 2016), although I confess I’m most interested in her thoughts on lifelong learning and embracing new things after 50.

Marc Freedman has a similar target audience — the age 50+ — but more on doing meaningful work. His work with Encore.org has all the marks of humanitarian creation, volunteering in retirement, etc. But I am not usually enamoured of the throughline. The argument, frequently, is “do meaningful work, improve your life”. Few question the logic, except that the logic is dependent that your “meaning” in life is from what you do, not what you experience. The service to others argument is indeed powerful, but it is the same argument that suggests every woman should be a mother, easily debunked. If you assume a good life is one that serves others, then serving others is a good way to have a meaningful life. The frame doesn’t hold for me, even if I admire the ethic. It’s part of the answer, but I have never felt it was the whole answer. Too simplistic, in my mind. Not simplistic for everyone, not in a normative sense, I just mean it doesn’t resonate enough with me.

I think what bothers me most, in a simplified way, is the idea of defining your worth in terms of meeting other people’s needs. It is a particularly utilitarian way of looking at life — and a slippery slope to saying other people are only of value if they serve me in some way too. That’s not the message, I know. But it is partly why it doesn’t resonate with me. I think a well-lived life is more about choosing a path, and adhering to it against adversity. Looking for truth in any form you can discover it. Service is one way, but not the only way. Which, of course, won’t stop me from reading his work and learning any applicable lesson I can. 🙂

Tyler Cowen co-created the Marginal Revolution (Small Steps Toward A Much Better World) and the content is glorious. Everything anyone ever wanted to learn about economics is in plain language and free. Unless you buy the textbook. The scope is ambitious, the result is stupendous. And envy-inviting. I could only dream of creating something so significant. And he’s blogged every day since 2003, although he is a bit more succinct than I, and he seems to curate more these days than write. But what does he have to do with retirement? Nothing, really, so much as he does talk about productivity over the life-course. I’m not sure if that will hold as an ancillary lens for me, but it’s worth checking out in more detail. And if not, well, who doesn’t like learning about economics?

Mary Catherine Bateson’s point-of-view of “adulthood II” is compelling as a metaphor, as is the idea of life being a composition. But when she embraces the spirit of cultural anthropology, I find it merely interesting, not resonant.

That can’t be everybody

Of course not. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people out there blogging about various stages of life, but finding ones that are closer to my voice is a bit harder than a pure Google search. And what I avoided were ones with singular niches or specialties. Sports in retirement. Dancing in retirement. Travel in retirement. Sex in retirement. Finances in retirement. That’s not what I’m looking for, nor what I’m likely to focus on. As I said above, lifelong learning is more likely to be my slant than anything else.

And yet searching for that will basically just turn up enormous numbers of sites with ads to “learn with them as a mature adult”. I’ve already blogged about all my learning considerations and options when I retire. And whether I might take a Transitional Support Measure to do some formal learning.

Tom Vanderbilt’s approach in “Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning” (2021) focuses on a year of doing new things, which is intriguing as an initial premise, but not near long enough to judge a framework.

Although, maybe I’m too quick to discount the ads. There is the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes (OLLIs) in the US that used to be “Institutes for Learning in Retirement”; the UK and France created the University of the Third Age which is more international now; and there are some examples in Canada. Perhaps worth a look.

I also should perhaps pull my head out of the retirement space to reframe the lifelong learning component and see what others are writing about for lifelong learning BEFORE retirement. People like Cal Newport; Andy Matuschak; Maggie Appleton; or Michael Nielsen. Not quite sure they’re worth the time investment to dive deep or not, as they are often focused on the nature of adult learning itself, which is only part of the issue for me. Although I **DO** have other non-fiction writing that would benefit from that lens, and some of Cal Newport’s work is already in my TBR pile.

I thought I would find more of a definitive resonant source to read. Instead, I found fragmented stuff, all of which are potential rabbit holes for me. The economic stuff alone could consume a year of fun reading. No, I’m serious. 🙂

Useful starting points though.