Happy Monday, everybody!
My Monday, today, is a little different from last week: actually, it’s different from every Monday I’ve ever lived through before. As of midnight last night, I am officially retired; Friday was my last day in a job I’d held for nearly 33 years.
And now, as David Gray would say, “Every day when I open my eyes now it feels like a Saturday.”
It’s a strange feeling, not having to think about upcoming work deadlines ever again. But I’m not complaining.
In August 1991, after working in various newspaper jobs around St. Louis for a few years, I landed a gig as assistant editor of The Waterways Journal, a weekly trade magazine for the barge industry. After five years, when the previous editor retired, they dropped the “assistant” from my title; it was the last promotion I ever received. (Actually, that’s not true; at some point I was also named “associate publisher,” but as the company is a small one and everyone was already doing a variety of things anyway, that title didn’t really come with any new responsibilities.)
The WJ goes to press every Thursday. Sometimes very, very late on Thursday. As the years went on, those long, hectic Thursdays became harder and harder to recover from, both physically and mentally. And this month, I turn 65, and therefore am eligible for Medicare, so I figured this was as good a time as any to say goodbye to the workweek. Here’s my farewell letter that ran in edition of the the magazine that comes out today.
The office was so glad to see me finally leave that they threw a party Friday to celebrate; we took a cruise on the Missouri River from Augusta, Mo, aboard the Miss Augusta. It was a fitting and very enjoyable send-off after three decades of trying to follow everything that was happening on America’s waterways.
What Will You Do?
In recent weeks, I’ve found that the No. 1 question asked of anybody who retires or is about to retire is: “What will do with your time?”
It’s a tough one to answer. Maybe “watch soap operas and drink box wine?” OK, I won’t be doing that. The thing is though, I don’t really know for sure, other than I won’t be going into an office every day.
But the answer definitely isn’t “nothing,” either. The older you get, the longer your to-do list becomes. I have plenty of chores around the house that will keep me busier than I want to be, including about two decades’ worth of deferred yard work.
I certainly plan to do more reading, and some more writing—hopefully I’ll get back into a regular habit of writing here in Shoulblog—and the plan for now, at least, is to travel a little more often. Basically, I’m free to do what I want with my time. (Or, if you prefer something a little less campy, I’m free to do what I want…)
Honestly the thing I’m most looking forward is being able to exercise when I choose. The older I get, the harder it is to work out first thing in the morning. And I’ve never been an evening athlete. The sweet spot to go for a run is about 10 a.m., which I could never do when I was tied to a desk five days a week.
The one downside of all of this might be for Jean, my wife. She’ll have to put up with me all day, every day now. She also retired, from a hugely impactful teaching career, in May. Hopefully she won’t get sick of having me around all the time.
