askyermom

We can see a lot of retiring minds these days. It’s really just a matter of paying attention. Your own mind may be circling thoughts of retirement at any given time, even if you don’t have a job right now.

For me, it seemed like a far off place, retirement. Now it’s coming for me.

When I first got sober, people warned me in the way they do–I should not make any big changes or big decisions. I’ve seen this go awry for others, so I believed in the peril.

Even a year in, I was making unforced errors at work that might have made a more alert person consider retirement. Apparently, our brains need time to unpickle and it isn’t a process you can rush. We have to get good sleep and vitamins and not marry the first bozo who catches our eye.

There is a period of untangling and rebuilding from the very sinewy bits in our brains to the intricacies of our tool shed and random hardware collection. Many of us need time to pay debts we don’t even remember signing on to, whether financial or emotional or spiritual. We have to mend the broken things all around us and figure out why we have so many screwdrivers of the same type. Personally, I have three hammers of the same weight and at any given time I can only find one of them, which is self-explanatory of the method of owning three hammers.

Anyhoo, at that time I said I would never retire. I was sure that I could not afford to in any way. Not only was my savings insufficient, I did not see myself as a person who could turn away from structure and the habit of going to the office. Working from home didn’t feel like a benefit, it just made work a presence in my home. It felt like work was invading my home, actually, after years of having scrupulously kept it separate. I had always left my office beefs in the office beef drawer, in the office.

In truth, I didn’t have a lot of office beefs. I had worries and disappointments and for a time, I had a nemesis, but really I was not a consequential person in our organization, so the stakes were always low. People would try to tell me I mattered, but the actions over several years told a different story. I was not informed of important plans, I was drained of responsibilities bit by bit until I became something like a security guard. I was not, in fact, a security guard, but more of a prop and a security blanket. I was the resource for old records and old technology, the office historian, even though I had not been there for all the interesting history.

I love my coworkers, even the cranky ones, and it will be an adjustment to drop off their schedules entirely. I suspect they will miss me more than they think and they will not replace me because it’s ridiculous to have an office manager in an office that no longer has any administrative needs.

What will I do? I will write and walk around.

But first, I will get some rest. I realized after the last head cold that I am really not able to get the rest I need as an older person with a full time job. I feel pretty good on Monday and after a few days of work I am drained when I get home. Honestly, by Tuesday I am already ending the day at 6 as dead meat.

For the past year, I tried to remedy my fatigue. I optimized things and drank more water. Each improvement helped until I was no longer in danger of falling asleep while driving. Bonus.

It seems that what is wrong in this equation is the meaningless job. I take on perilous travel to sit at a desk and do very little. When people ask me what I do, I tell them I have a fake job. I have a position, but I can do my work in one hour and when I don’t do it, no one notices.

Earlier this year, I decided that I would retire just as soon as I figured out what I would do with myself. In the effort to solve that puzzle, I have come to recognize that I am trapped in a fatigue loop. None of this stuff is going to get clearer while I am so tired from not working.

Update: I did it. I decided I mostly trust myself not to lose the plot as I figure things out. I am now a retired person, at least temporarily. It took a lot of thinking and re-thinking. I had to try to conjure up what sort of situation would make me want to continue working in my fake job and I realized there was nothing. I shuffled ideas around and realized that basking in boredom was doing real harm. Not only that, I was reaching a point where I was deeply annoyed any time I had work to do, which is straight up bonkers. A protest was brewing in my being and it began to show up in my life in many ways–too many to ignore. I will miss my lovely people, but we can still connect outside the office if we really want to.

It’s time to buy the cat a stroller and embrace my era of eccentricity.

Love,
yermom