I’ve
talked to lots of retired folks who have this experience: Someone asks what
you’ve been up to, and you find yourself at a loss for words. It’s hard to name
the things you do, they come and go with such smooth frequency and without any
particular temporal structure, so it’s hard to find them when you’re asked. So
you mutter something about “keeping busy” (which is often enough to shift the conversation
to another topic) and wonder to yourself what you have been doing. The one thing you know for sure is that you’ve
been “keeping busy.” Every day is full, and you’re plenty tired. But unless
something really dramatic has happened, the days do flow smoothly, and barring
exciting adventures, it’s hard to say what precisely they’ve held.
So,
I just had this experience myself, only the person inquiring was me. I realized that it’s been weeks
since I posted a new blog, but I can’t really say why. “Busy, I guess,” I said
to myself. “And just what has kept me so busy?” (I didn’t let me off the hook
like most folks do). Unable to answer, I
actually checked my calendar (now that’s pitiful!). And I found a collection of
assorted events – attending a play at The Dairy, taping a radio show, hosting
another show live, meetings about other up-coming shows, a farewell party for a
colleague, an afternoon piano recital (‘The Soiree,’ officially), the Manhattan
Middle School annual Diversity Day assembly (featuring Resonance Women’s Chorus,
a.k.a. “my chorus”), an author talk about homophobia in women’s sports and her
experience at CU, a performance by
“Somethin’ About Lulu,” a meeting of Old Lesbians Organizing for Change, bits
of website work for Boulder Valley Safe Schools Coalition, and some projects related to my new role as Organizing Maven for Resonance (I’ve
been upgraded from “assistant maven”!). Plus the usual life-maintenance stuff:
grocery shopping, laundry, errands, trash and recycling, paying bills …
So,
I said to myself, that’s a lot of small
things (OK, Resonance isn’t “small,” but it’s not huge). But it doesn’t explain
why I manage to barely slip in a walk most days or why the magazines pile up
unread for weeks on end. And then I thought about the part of my life that I often
forget to mention when folks ask what I’ve been up to. My job. I spend about 4
hours a day, every day—equivalent to a half-time job or more—on my at-home,
freelance editing job. It’s often fascinating, occasionally boring work that I
actually enjoy a lot. And, more to the point here, it fills huge chunks of
every day, leaving me far less time for leisure (or for adventurous
undertakings) than a “retired” person might be expected to have. I guess my
identity as “retired” is so primary in how folks see me—and, apparently, how I
see myself—that this little item goes unremarked.
This
interview with myself got me thinking about how we understand “retirement” in
general. Sociologists talk about the concept of a “master status”—i.e., a
particular status or identity that seems so compelling that everything else
becomes secondary. Knowing someone’s “master status” makes us think we know a
lot about them: she’s a woman, so she’s sensitive and nurturing; he’s a
teenager, so he’s rebellious. It seems like work status is a master status. We
place so much emphasis on productivity and achievement that our “work”—i.e.,
specific, gainful, often full-time employment—becomes our identity. So it’s not
surprising that when someone leaves work, we assume that they have nothing to
do. Except maybe spend all their time looking for work, if they’re “out of
work” instead of “retired from work.” When people want or need a job, time away
from work often seems like lost time or wasted time. But when we retire … what
is it then? Empty time? Meaningless, aimless time?
In
truth, many of the retired folks I know have an identity based on anything but
empty time. Their sense of themselves is grounded in what they now do, not by
what they no longer do. It’s a name for this sort of identity that I’m fishing
for when I can’t find an answer to “what have you been up to?” I have no
overriding, umbrella identity—which I definitely did have when I was working full time. Back then, I could easily tell
you want I do (i.e., my work). Now,
without that work identity, neither I nor other folks have a concept for what I
do, other than that I’m retired. Which means unlimited time to do nothing in particular.
To fill my days with pastimes, just
passing time.
So
then I ask myself, why do I pretty routinely forget about the role that actually
explains what I do with a lot of my time? Why do I forget to mention it to
others, forget to remember it myself? Maybe it’s that this particular activity is
hard to fit into the same conversation with “retired,” since it is a job of
sorts. But I think it’s more than that. Other folks have equally
time-consuming, equally compelling activities. Activities that are as important
to them as their jobs were. Do I miss noticing, being curious about those
too? “Retired.” No occupational
identity. So, what do you do with all
your time?
Seems
like we need to listen more carefully to ourselves and to one another. It might
help if we remember that when folks say they’re retired, it doesn’t actually
mean they have no engrossing, self-defining activities, no substantive meaning in
their lives. It’s just that it’s not about work—at
least not in the standard sense.
And
those of us who are retired probably need to remember that about ourselves,
too, lest we fall into the trap of thinking that “retired” means that
everything we do counts as a “pastime.”
© Janis
Bohan, 2010-2014. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to
the post.
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