All about the title ... well, half of 'all about the title'

Welcome to "Retirement in the Mix: Resisting 'Gone'"—a title that I'm guessing needs some clarification. So I'll begin by trying to explain how this blog got its name … which is to say, I'll try to explain what retirement means to me and why I’m want to blog about it. Since this explanation is sort of long, I’ll divide it into parts:

(1) What’s with the maze and the mix?

(2) What do I mean by “resisting ‘gone’”?

On the maze and the mix:

When I retired, I didn’t have any clear plan about what I’d do with my time. I had fantasies, of course – world travel, growing a fantastic garden (which I had never done, never really wanted to do, and haven’t done yet), hanging out at coffee shops reading the newspaper or thick, profound novels. Alternatively, I imagined doing a lot of volunteer work that would save the world one person at a time. A sort of Mighty Mouse approach to community involvement. And sometimes, I imagined walking picket lines and being jailed for anti-war protests.

What I didn’t imagine was that I would find myself captured by the perennial adolescent question, “Who the heck am I?” I used to know the answer to that, back when I was mid-career, loving my work and finding it very satisfying. But now, without that identity to wrap around me, I felt … um … lost. It wasn’t that I had no other identity. I had friends and family, many interests. I was certainly plenty busy. In fact, I was like virtually every retired person I know. I kept wondering how on earth I’d found time to work. But still, I felt at loose ends. At some point, (reading a thing about Descartes, if you really want to know) I imagined myself standing at the entrance of a huge lawn maze—you know, the kind with high hedges and naked Roman statues. There I stood, wondering what I’d find if I went in. I knew there would be lots of paths, but I wasn’t at all sure I’d know which one to take. (There’s the maze.)


Now this was a complicated dilemma! On the one hand, I felt at a loss about who I was, now. On the other hand, I felt confident in who I was at some core level. I was just totally baffled about where I fit in. It wasn’t who I was (or was not) in some deep, existential sense that had me baffled. It was who I was in the world. Maybe (much as I hate to admit it) it was nothing more than insecurity about who I was in the eyes of others.

I still wrestle with this “Who am I, anyway?” question some. I suppose bouts of that will show up here. But after several years living in the maze of retirement, the angst isn’t a daily companion. For the most part, I find myself content with the answer that has crafted itself from my experiences during those years. And that’s how it feels—I didn’t figure out the maze; it figured me out!

Who I am now is much more fluid, more situational, less tied to a particular role. My identity in the world changes daily and is a whole patchwork of “who-I-ams” and “what-I-dos.” I suppose there’s a thread runs that through who I will be today (a freelance editor working all day at home, alone) and continues into who I will be tomorrow (a grocery-shopping, volunteering, walk-taking, committee-organizing, coffee shop-frequenting, multi-tasking, foot-loose retiree). But that thread doesn’t carry any label but my name (and often, my anonymity; more on that later).

What I’m trying to say is that retirement, for me, has become not a quest for an identity or for a way to label myself: “retired and ______ “ (a family woman, a world traveler, a craftsperson, a golfer, a volunteer, an artist, an activist, etc.). Instead, it’s some mix of the endless assortment of possibilities that show up in a day, a week, or a decade. I discover I am content wandering in the maze, waiting to see which Roman goddess or god will appear around the next corner.

So, my experience of retirement is like my experience of my identity. It’s complicated, and that’s invigorating. It’s living in the mix.

And next time, what do I mean by "Resisting 'gone'"?