Volunteer travel log: New Hampshire

Today, I spent a couple of hours on one of my current volunteer gigs, working through a local aging services program as sort of a “buddy” to a senior. I delight in this relationship, and being there got me thinking: It would be fun to talk a bit about the assortment of volunteer jobs I’ve had during my retirement. It’s a great example of sampling “the mix.” So here goes ...

For several years after I retired, we moved around the country. This was a grand adventure, but it was tough to find my footing in new places (5 of them over the course of 6 years). I wanted to get involved in volunteer work, but I didn’t know the communities well enough to know where to start. So I adopted a pattern of waiting for something to show up—a process I use to this day. I listen to conversations, pay attention to chatter on the radio, read the local paper to see what was going on, talk with folks I meet, generally stay open. My job in this is not to search frantically but to pay attention, to be alert. Before long, something always bubbles up, something that says “This! This would be cool!” One of the best things about retirement is the availability of time. I have the time to wait, watch, listen … and when a fit comes along, I have time that I can commit to it. What a gift!

So, let me tell you about some of the volunteer gigs I’ve found this way and a bit about what I learned from them. First, a teaser. Among my volunteer gigs have been the following:

• Sorting stuff and grinding glass in a rural recycling plant
• Assisting the chef and generally helping in a community kitchen
• Traveling from New Hampshire to Oregon to work against a ballot issue
• Doing grassroots organizing with the American Friends Service Committee

• Volunteering as a news intern for Rachel Maddow (Really!), who was at that time the morning DJ in the basement studio of a local radio station 
• Blogging for a major western Mass. newspaper (blogging some mighty interesting events!)
• Delivering Meals on Wheels
• Acting as the (supposedly) responsible adult in an LGBTQ youth drop-in center
• Working on a presidential campaign  (once finding myself alone to run the campaign office because of football!)
• Teaching literacy in a program for folks in legal trouble trying to re-enter society
• Supervising a phone bank for an LGBTQ political action group
• Staffing health education booths for the Department of Public Health—street fairs in San Francisco!
• Becoming friends with a senior through a respite and companion volunteer program
• Helping a 13-year-old with special needs to manage the complexity of middle school
• Serving on a coalition that works to make schools safe and welcoming for LGBTQ folks and their families.

All of these gigs came from listening, watching, waiting. Ah, the luxury of time! All of them have tales attached—funny, poignant, thought-provoking, joyful, a mix. So, now that I have your attention with the Rachel Maddow story, let me start at the beginning of our wandering years. Small town New Hampshire …

I heard through a friend about the local community kitchen, where they needed someone to help make dinners. Back-stage kitchen work. This may seem odd after my rant about invisibility, but this sounded perfect! I really enjoyed the chef who ran the place, which made it extra fun. Here, I learned how to cut vegetables correctly with a butcher knife, and I learned for the first time what “shepherd’s pie” is. I also found out about eggplant. I came to realize how many grocery stores overstock and how many farms overplant eggplant. This, I am convinced, is the only vegetable that can rival zucchini as the bunny rabbit of plants. However, as far as I know, zucchini just shows up everywhere in the fall. Eggplant is around all year. I'm still not much of a fan of eggplant.

Then, one day, I was dropping off stuff at the local rural recycling center and the guy running it said, “why don’t you volunteer some time, join your neighbors?” I heard this whisper: "Cool! This will be fun!” I started the next week. It seemed perfect: with the community kitchen, this made both ends of the food chain. Here, I learned three valuable lessons: 

1. Never leave a dollop of milk in the bottom of your milk jug and then deliver it to the recycling center days later. The stench is deadly to volunteers. 
2. The machine that grinds class is a total kick to operate! This may be partly because you have to earn your stripes as a basic recycler before being invited to do it, so it has a gold star on the forehead quality to it. Lesson 2b: Always wear ear protectors, goggles, and heavy-duty gloves whenever the rules say you should. I had some close calls with fingers and eyes; the ear protection saved my sanity. 
3. This lesson applies if you live near the border with another state and your state doesn’t pay a deposit on cans. Here’s how you make money to run the recycling program: pack up a load of those return-deposit cans, truck them across the river, and cash them in. Do not tell anyone I told you this. 

The other great thing about this job, not a lesson really, was that I got to wear those cool brown, flannel-lined, full-coverage overalls like construction workers (and serious recyclers!) wear. After all, it’s cold in NH in the winter, so I felt compelled to get myself some. I was grinding glass and all. I felt like I had arrived. 

My last volunteer job in New Hampshire was in Oregon. I flew from NH to Oregon to work against an anit-LGBTQ initiative there. I got to spend 2 weeks with some amazing organizers, talking with voters on the street and on the phone. I learned a huge lesson here. I had trouble approaching people and asking them to sign up to volunteer for phone banking—hours of cold calls about a controversial issue. Then, the leader of our organizing group pointed out something really profound. You came all  the way from New Hampshire to do this work, he said. Why? Because it’s important, I answered. I wanted to have a chance to help make a difference. Exactly, he smiled. You're giving other folks that same opportunity—to make a difference. He had me. We all worked hard for those 2 weeks, and by golly, we won!

Lots of fun, lots of good folks, lots of lessons learned. Some were really important life lessons (give other people a chance to do good in the world). Some were metaphors for important life lessons (don't leave sour milk for the other person to clean up; when life gets dangerous, wear protective gear). Some were just for laughs (grinding glass in overalls is a kick!).

New Hampshire was just the start. Next stop, Massachusetts—which  by the way, is where I worked with Rachel.

Did I mention Rachel Maddow?

Successfully solving the wrong problem

Have you ever had a moment when you realized that you had struggled to solve a problem, only to realize it was the wrong problem? I had one of those recently.

With the change back to standard time, we were dutifully changing the batteries in our smoke alarms, as recommended by the fire department. One of them had some sort of electrical short, so we called the fix-it shop to order up an electrician. (I love to “fix” things, but I draw the line at things that throw grown men from the tops of power poles.)

The electrician persuaded me that it would be wise to install some new alarms. (That's another story). I agreed, he installed, and all was right with the world. Until midnight, when we were startled awake by this loud noise that we took to be the smoke alarms. After all, they were new, so who knew whether they might be faulty. I scurried, bleary-eyed, to the garage to grab the ladder. With my partner spotting me, I climbed the ladder and removed each alarm from the very high ceilings (which I can barely reach  on a good day, never mind at midnight, hence the spotter). I unplugged each unit from its connection to the electrical system and then removed the batteries.

I had achieved my goal: all of the smoke alarms were completely disabled. The problem was solved. Unfortunately, it was the wrong problem.

We continued to hear this oscillating roar. I paused, thought it through carefully, methodically considered all the ways I might fix it … and then called the shop. I got the dispatcher, who got the electrician, who called me. After a puzzled conversation, he said he’d come over. (“I’ll be coming in civilian clothes,” he’d said. Note to customer: “I am off duty”).

Only after I hung up the phone did I process that this was the wrong sort of sound for a smoke alarm (especially from one that is unplugged and battery-less). It sounded more like the alarm on a clock radio. Bingo! I have an old clock radio in my study that I never use except as a clock. Never as an alarm. I hurried to my study, punched the button, and voila! The noise stopped. The problem was never the smoke alarms. It was the clock radio!

Fortunately, I had the electrician’s cell number on caller ID and caught him before he had dragged himself out of bed, into some clothes, out to his truck, and through the night to our house. I'm glad I caught him, but I'm certain we'll be the laughing stock of the home-repair shop this week.

So, laughing about this ourselves, my partner and I thought about how often we humans struggle mightily to solve a problem, only to discover that the solution doesn’t help because we solved the wrong problem. Samples:

• I once knew a woman who walked around all day in uncomfortable shoes (just one of them, but that was bad enough). She promised herself she’d throw them away when she got home. She was headed for the trash can when she noticed something rattling in the bottom of her shoe—and retrieved her contact lens case. She almost solved the wrong problem.

• We have a north-facing garage, so the driveway is always shaded. Also, we live in a town home complex, and our driveway is located so that a vast expanse of lawn and road drains right to our driveway. It was a very snowy winter (2006-7) when we moved in, and I struggled to keep the packed snow and run-off from becoming a lethal hazard. I tried chopping it with a shovel, but to no avail. I tried salt. No help. I finally bought an edger, which served pretty well as an ice chopper, and spent many hours chopping through 6"-thick ice. The next winter, various events led me to consider the possibility that the problem wasn't my ice-removal strategies. It was poor management by the HOA. Turns out they're supposed to clear the driveways. So, instead of investing in a full-sized road grader, I emailed the HOA and got them on the task. Our driveway is now kept clear. I'd been chopping away at the wrong problem.

• I also got fooled by this process when I was teaching. I recall struggling with how to get my students more engaged in my latest academic fascination, only to slowly realize that the problem wasn’t them. It was me. I needed to be working out my latest edgy ideas in a different venue. I had been trying to solve the wrong problem.

• On a larger scale, we once heard a governor promise to increase the percentage of state residents who had college degrees. The guv said nothing about improving education or making the educational system meet students’ needs. Too few degrees! That was the heart of the state’s problems! The truth is, it wouldn’t be hard to solve that problem. You could just lower expectations, lower requirements, give everybody degrees. But I’m pretty sure that would be solving the wrong problem.

• I guess this blog is another example. I'd been feeling out of sorts, cranky (restless, irritable, and discontent, as some would say). My solution was to disappear farther into my crabby recluse mode. If the problem is that the world is dissatisfying, then hiding out would keep me from having to deal with it. Problem solved. Except that I was still cranky. My partner encouraged me to consider the possibility that maybe the problem was not the world but my disconnection from it. Redefining the problem changed the game. Now, here I am, resisting being gone. I blog, therefore I am! 

Our smoke alarms now work fine. The clock radio alarm is no longer set to go off at midnight. All is well in my world once again. But I'm sure I'll get caught in this trap again. And chances are I won't recognize what I'm doing until I finish solving the wrong problem. 

On fall leaves and variable weather

Watching folks clearing the fall leaves has set me to thinking about a profound matter: how differently fall leaves are managed in different locales. This may seems trivial, but bear with me a minute.

A brief prelude: After living for many (many!) years in Colorado, we moved around a lot, living in five states in the space of 6 years. That experience was really enlightening in many ways. One of the things I learned is captured in the saga of fall leaves.

As a kid growing up in Colorado, I learned what to do with fall leaves: you rake them up, bag them, and take them someplace. When we moved to New England, I was met with curious stares when I asked where bagged leaves should be deposited. I learned to rake them into the woods. When I asked friends in Michigan how folks dealt with leaves, I was met with the same curious stare. I learned to rake them into the gutter, where some truck would scoop them up. In each place, folks were dumbfounded by my question because they couldn’t get what was so hard to understand. It was incomprehensible that anyone would not know what to do with fall leaves. To them, it was so obvious. It was unimaginable that there might be several possible ways to deal with leaves.

The message, of course, is not just about leaves. We have regional “knowledge” (just as we have personal knowledge) that is totally taken as given. It’s not that your everyday New Englander, Michigander, or Coloradan has considered a variety of options and concluded that this is the best way to handle fall leaves. No. Options other than the familiar one, the one that seems so self-evident, are simply not considered—or even imagined. Maybe you’ve heard the saying that a fish doesn’t know it’s wet. We are all that fish.

A variation on this theme: My parents lived in Louisiana for a few years. Once, they were telling friends there about a road that had washed out in Colorado. “Why don’t they just put in a shell road?” their friends asked. Their friends were totally clueless that their suggestion was based on assumptions that would make sense in Louisiana but were meaningless in the land-locked high dessert that is Colorado.

The second intriguing observation from these travels was about how folks understand the weather. In this case, people everywhere did something virtually exactly alike, but in each locale, folks thought it was original to them. So, wherever we lived, we heard people saying, “You know what they say about weather in ________ (fill in the present location). If you don’t like it, wait around a few minutes. It’ll change.” I’d heard that my whole lifetime in Colorado, and I took it to be a clever—and accurate—commentary on Colorado’s variable weather. Then I heard it in New Hampshire. And in Massachusetts. And in Michigan. And even in San Francisco. In each place, folks thought, as I had, that it was a witty, and accurate, description of their own weather. It was an announcement of how special their weather was: “Unlike weather in other places, our weather changes all the time!” 

Now, I’m not sure what the message is here. This pronouncement might be common because the weather truly is variable, everywhere. But why do we all make it about our own location? “You know what they say about the weather here…” Maybe it speaks to everyone’s need to feel special. If we live in a place that’s special, where the weather is remarkably variable, then aren’t we a little special? Or maybe it’s another version of local “truths.” Maybe I became convinced that Colorado’s weather is unusual in its variability. Maybe I never consider other possible understandings of the world—like that the weather is variable everywhere.

I’m still working on what I can learn from this one. But it strikes me as fascinating anyway, sort of like the unique variability of Colorado’s weather.

Where were you?

Yesterday, I was catching up on some magazines and got around to the Nov. 21 issue of Time, where a photograph caught my eye. The photograph shows JFK , instantly recognizable from his profile, his stance—at least to people of a certain age. He is standing  on a platform in what looks to be a parking lot in a working-class neighborhood. 

When I first saw this picture, what struck me immediately, almost viscerally, were the people standing on the balconies of a nearby building just beyond Kennedy’s profile. I didn't even process this rationally. I was stunned. Not by the image of Kennedy, although looking at it today brings back memories of where I was on November 22, 1963. No, I was stunned by the people on the balconies. Everyday folks, women in skirts or dresses and men in white shirts, their sleeves rolled up. Standing on open balconies and leaning from windows within a stone’s throw of the president! 

Kennedy, in turn, looks completely exposed, completely vulnerable—and complete unaware of the danger that I sensed instantly. No bullet-proof Plexiglas shield, no hint of a protective vest under his suit (remember the pictures of Bush walking across the White House lawn after 9-11?), no standard-issue Secret Service agents in stiff suits and sunglasses, with little curly cords running down into their collars.  The caption identifies the city as Pittsburgh and the date as sometime in 1962. The year before Kennedy was shot.

The picture brought home how much has changed since the photo was taken. The remarkable changes in how important people move in the world are accepted, expected, ingrained in us all. So ingrained, in fact, that my instant response to this portrayal of how things used to be was an automatic one, not a logical one. It happened on some primitive, gut level: “This is terrifying!” The automatic reaction (from a pacifist!) was that Kennedy needs more armament around him, fast! Where are the tough guys? Where are the police and the National Guard? While we’re at it, where is the Air Force?

Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas 48 years ago today, about a year after this photo was taken, was only one of many assassinations in the US and around the world in the 1960s. In part because of those events, we’re not  likely ever to see a photo like this of a president again.

The photo we’d see now would not show everyday people gathered on neighboring balconies. The balconies would be empty, the buildings “swept” hours before by the Secret Service. There would be no crowds milling about just feet from the podium. Instead, there would be a wide empty perimeter around the stage, multiple Plexiglas shields to protect the president from all directions, a notable bulge in his or her suit, extensive and visible police presence, and plenty of guys (and now women) in sunglasses.

And If I saw that photograph, I would not even notice how I felt. It would simply seem “normal.”

At one level, these changes are good. Protecting the president is important, and these horrific events probably changed forever how we'll see "safety" for the president. But then, 9-11 shifted the target. Not just heads of state but everyday folks, like those standing on the balconies, are in danger. This was always true in some parts of the world, but not here. So the wish to protect shifted, too. To the Secret Service, we added TSA and x-ray machines at building entrances. To the perimeter around the president we added body scanners and bomb-sniffing dogs at airports. Now, I start getting worried. [Naomi Wolff worries, too]

There’s no doubt that the world can be dangerous and that we are all vulnerable. But I worry that we’re forgetting to think about how we respond as we try to fashion complete safety from an unsafe world. I worry that fear can make us accept changes, step by small step, that we wouldn't tolerate if they were imposed all of a piece. I worry that fear gets the best of us. I’m not saying I’m any good at this. Heck, my reaction to this picture was visceral before it was logical. That tells me that in situations like this, my first response is not that I think. No, I fear.

Benjamin Franklin famously said, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty not safety.” It seems important that we realize how easily we slide into this place where we are driven by fear for our safety.

This picture reminded me of how much things have changed. I'm glad the current president has more protection than Kennedy did. But I worry about how thoughtlessly we got where we are. And I worry about where we might go from here.

[An earlier online issue of Time included a photo gallery that will take you straight back to “Camelot,” accompanied by a story about the photographer, Jacques Lowe.]

A day in the mix

So, I’ve been going on about how my version of retirement is a mix of things. These things have nothing particular in common, but together, they make for a delicious day. Today was a good example.

I started my day, as I usually do, with breakfast and coffee, which I enjoyed with the news … online, of course. (Yes, this means I eat at my desk. I know folks have thoughts about that. Feel free to add yours.) Reading the news with breakfast is an old habit. I remember doing it when “The News” arrived just once a day, on the doorstep or in the driveway, or for some of us, in the box down at the corner. It was called “the paper” (and it was), and you had to order a subscription, unless you lived someplace where you could pick it up at a newsstand. You could tear out articles you wanted to keep, it got ink on your hands, and it made a great surface for muddy boots. Now, “the paper” (which isn’t) is available 24/7, you download or print out things you want, you can’t handle it or tear it, and muddy boots have to find someplace else to land. I miss the inky reality of the newspaper. But you can still eat your breakfast while reading the news. I know this for a fact.

I folded the paper and laid it by the door (OK, not really), and then spent a few hours with my freelance editing job. I edit journal articles written by people whose first language isn’t English. The articles are written in what I call “English-ish.” The words are mostly English, and it’s usually  possible to discern some meaning from how they’re put together. But their precise meaning is often more than a little obscure. I totally love the puzzle quality of it: “Just what,” I ask the author in my mind, “are you trying to say here? What could you possibly mean?” I also love that I get to read articles in fields I would never enter under other circumstances. For instance, today I edited articles on the following topics: 

• tinnitus (ringing in the ears) associated with forced eye closure syndrome
• herbal remedies for memory loss in Alzheimer's
• glacial geomorphology studies
• the distribution of sea grasses and algal beds
• environmental improvement from a water quality perspective
• stimulus-driven attentional capture. 

Really! Except for the last one, I would never read these things—I’m a psychologist, for Pete’s sake! But with this job, I get glimpses into topics I’d never know squat about otherwise. Besides, I get to do it in my sweatpants, on my own time, at home, with a cup of tea at my elbow. And they call this work?

Long's Peak

Then, I took a very fine walk. The trail I chose is one of my favorites because it offers wonderful views of the Rockies. I can see as far south as Pike’s Peak and north beyond Long’s Peak toward Wyoming. That’s a stretch of maybe 100 miles of the foothills and front range. The high peaks are snow covered now, and while I was watching them, Long’s Peak disappeared into a cloud, which it often does. Looking up that direction, I thought about how cold it must be up there. And that reminded me of times I’ve backpacked in these mountains. One time in particular, I opened the tent door to go out around midnight. The moon was casting sharp shadows in this thin air, and the ground looked so bright, I thought  it must be lit by the moonlight. My hand was firmly planted on the ground before it struck me that  the brilliant white was snow, not moonlight. I packed up a wet tent that day and hiked out dodging clumps of melting snow falling from the evergreens. On my walk (today, not the frozen-hand day), I met a rescued greyhound and a golden retriever, who was certain that I had come out there to pet him. I obliged.

My next stop, the grocery store, is worth a bit of attention if only because it’s such a kick to shop there right now. They’re remodeling and staying open while they do so. This means that automotive supplies are to be found, quite logically, next to bread. Bandaids are near yogurt, and Christmas ornaments are next to OTC drugs; the pharmacy is on the far side of the store next to the coffee shop. Of course! The store is so crowded and the lanes so narrow that corner collisions are a matter of course. The employees have clearly been told to keep it upbeat through all this. I know this because trying to empathize with the checkers has led nowhere—and I’m usually pretty good at that. I'm sure they're pestered all day with questions and complaints, but they never utter so much as a “Yup, pretty crazy” when I comment (in a friendly, we're-all-in-this-together way) on the mess.

Back home, I settled down at my computer to work on one of my volunteer gigs. For a few years now, I have belonged to a safe schools coalition in my school district. This group works to make the schools safe and welcoming for LGBTQ kids, parents, and staff (LGBTQ means lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer… in case you missed it before). My job is to keep the website up to date, lively, interesting, hopefully “sticky.” I don’t do the techie stuff. I just feed material to our volunteer web maven. Thankfully, she takes it from there. Because I have been very involved in LGBT issues for several years, I have access to a lot of material. My partner is even more tuned into these issues, and she passes stuff on to me, too. I funnel all that to the website and hope that someone, somewhere looks at it and finds it marvelous. Much like I hope for with this blog. In case you’d like to be that someone, somewhere, check out the safe schools website.

And now, it’s early evening. I finished up the website stuff and started working on this blog. Next, I’ll dig into my “read immediately” pile of magazines. Smithsonian, Discover, and National Geographic are my favorites, but I'm rarely able to keep up with them. Whoever worried about being bored in retirement?! Later, I’ll go meet my partner for dinner when she gets off work after a very long day. It’ll be nice to stop for a bit and just enjoy being tended to. Unless the wait staff does that “honey” thing I mentioned in my last post.

There's the mix: morning news and reminiscences (about newspapers, of all things!) ... a half day of work that's actually great fun ... a walk wrapped around scenery, memories, and dog visits ... shopping as a contact sport ... volunteer work guaranteed to change the world ... all finished off with casual reading and time to chill out. 

What a great mix of a day, huh?

'All about the title' - part II

In my last post, I started explaining why I called this blog “Retirement in the Mix: Resisting ‘Gone.’” That post explained the “maze and the mix.” This time, I’ll try to make sense of the “Resisting ‘gone’” part.

On resisting being “gone”:

Over the years, it has become way too clear to me that being “invisible” is a big issue for me. I’m sure it stems from my childhood (to borrow an old phrase). But I really would like to have gotten over it by now. I haven’t.

Of course I don’t mean actually invisible. And I don’t mean unrecognized in the sense of insufficiently honored or respected or applauded. I mean feeling irrelevant, unnoticed, ignored, dismissed, trivialized, not seen. I mean those moments that we’ve all had when the conversation goes on as if we weren’t there. When our comments make not a ripple in the content or direction of what others say. When people walking toward us make no adjustment to avoid a collision, leaving the task entirely to us. When someone greets the person standing with us, but not us. When the wait staff ignores our table and serves later arrivals before us. When we are speaking and someone else talks over us, as if what we’re saying is not important enough for them to let us finish before they take their turn. Those moments, in short, when it seems that, to others, we might as well not even be there. We’ve all had those moments. They may cause irritation or disappointment for any of us. For me, they are also a source of deep sadness and loneliness.

So, given this issue with invisibility, retirement raised a real challenge. As a professor, of course, I had been able to command visibility: “Listen to me, hear me, your grade depends on it.” Fortunately, teaching wasn’t only a stage. I loved it and seemed to be good at it, and it was a perfect career for me in many ways—an opportunity to keep learning and call it “work,” a chance to do something that felt worthwhile, a way to feel competent . When I retired, I lost all those things, including the audience I had so easily counted on for 30 years. I lost the students who had filled my classes, many taking every course I taught. I lost their visits between classes and their rave evaluations. A similar thing happened as I withdrew from other professional activities. In this case, I no longer had a presence before my peers. Gone the publications, the conference presentations, the public talks. Invisibility loomed—if a sense of absence can be said to “loom.” Yikes! I hadn’t planned on this!

On top of that, retirement brought its own kind of invisibility: being old and being irrelevant. Hard enough for any of us to manage, and made harder by this invisibility thing of mine. Plus, the triple whammy: I am old, I am woman, and I am a lesbian. I belong to a group of folks who are generally quite invisible in this society. It’s a familiar story: women don’t matter as much as men (despite decades of feminist progress). Old people don’t matter as much as younger people. In fact, old people pretty much don’t matter at all. And old, non-heterosexual people are not even part of the conversation. That places old lesbians firmly among the very unimportant, the VUPs.

Snapshots of the invisibility of old women: Wait staff in restaurants and clerks in stores call me “honey.” This is obviously not because we have an intimate relationship. Instead, it’s because I am fair game for trivialization of the sort that comes with a patronizing, even infantilizing tone: “Can I help you, honey?” “There you go, sweetie.” And in case the irrelevance of my actual experience of such treatment isn’t obvious enough, they genuinely believe that they are being kind and that I’ll appreciate it. On the upside of this invisibility, I can do about anything I want to do because no one will “see” me enough to notice, or certainly to care.

My invisibility as a lesbian is more familiar, since that’s pretty much been true all my life. But now it takes on another face: I am invisible as an LGBTQ person in the broader world (that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer—I’m guessing I’ll use this acronym a lot). And  I am invisible as an old member of the LGBTQ community. Everywhere I go, I encounter the assumption that everyone, especially everyone old, is heterosexual. (“What does your husband do?” “Do your children live near you?”) And wherever I look in the LGBTQ community, I find the assumption that there are no old LGBTQ people—least of all lesbians! (Check out the LGBTQ magazines, where you will see approximately zero old LGBTQ people featured.)

So, another thing I hadn’t imagined about retirement was the specter of this profound sense of irrelevance and invisibility. The sense that I am, simply, gone. This is a familiar place for me to be, but not, shall I say, the healthiest. So, one theme of my retirement has been a commitment to resisting the invisibility that “they” (whoever that is) expect of me. That’s also one major reason for writing this blog. Rather than disappear, rather than be “gone,” I plan to have a voice, to remain in the mix, to keep stirring the pot. Hence, “resisting ‘gone’.”

So that’s the naming story. And now, I want to get on with blogging about it all, staying in the mix, resisting “gone”—and inviting you all to join in the discussion of how we all do this.

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'"?