How to retire from all of that retirement talk…

Many Americans Try Retirement, Then Change Their Minds— NY Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/30/health/unretirement-work-seniors.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

“Now back at work in a part-time position she designed for herself, she calls herself “a failed retiree.”

“A failed retiree”: I would be much more generous in my assessment of Ms. King. I am thinking that if your professional life-work was exciting, rewarding and fulfilling (and it seems that hers fits that criteria), then you might come to view traditional retirement as terribly overrated.

As a retired school teacher, principal/superintendent; I find a disconnectedness in my conversations with other ‘retirees’ who hated their jobs, and could not wait to retire. I loved every moment of my life as an educator, as challenging and difficult as it was at times. I now have taken on several new jobs (on my own terms): working with individual and groups of students on expanding their involvement with STEM; mentoring present and aspiring school building leaders, and writing a soon to be published book on school leadership: Report To The Principal’s Office (http://reporttotheprincipalsoffice.net/).

But I question if the ‘retirement model’ most often presented isn’t based on a particular ‘national-historical culture’, the individual personality type, attitude toward and feeling about the ‘work’, and to which occupation/vocation the ‘retiree’ was attached.

Clearly, going to ‘Work’ for some may have brought significance and meaning to their lives, and for others it might have represented the daily drudgery of meaninglessness.

And for some can a job-employment be, using a grammatical metaphor, a comma or semicolon, rather than a period between the person’s life inside and during, and outside and after, the ‘job’? And can one truly retire from a calling?

Perhaps there is no ‘one size fits all’ for decisions related to work, leisure time or retirement. And so maybe each person must find their own path, and place of joy, peace, productivity and fulfillment, in and after work.