Retired or just out of work?

As of October 31st, I'm out of work -- officially, again. I packed up my laptop, cut my corporate American Express card into little pieces and mailed it all back to my employer. The move to Memphis was the opportunity to take an early retirement. But, was this an act of retirement or just the beginning of a period of forced unemployment? People are taking bets.

I'm my father's daughter -- a Type A personality -- someone who "is marked by impatience, aggressiveness, and competitiveness and that has been implicated by some studies as a factor increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease," according to a medical dictionary. Dad must be smiling in his grave as I ponder this dilemma. True to type, rather than retire, he acquiesced to a massive heart attack at 63 while working at his desk one Saturday. He died in two weeks without having to face the issue. At 60, I need to face the retirement issue, but, needless to say, early death by heart attack is not what I have in mind.

Retirement, according to the Merriam Webster Online dictionary, means withdrawal from one's position or occupation: having concluded one's working or professional career. It also mean secluded. That's a scary thought for a social animal and I don't feel concluded in my professional career, just weary of the work. Therefore, I take the liberty to redefine the term retirement to mean a period of self enforced unemployment. For me, retirement is like marriage, which I define as a period of self-enforced relationship. I try it out and if it doesn't work, I move onto something else. Just observe my track record. It took me three marriages to find one, the fourth, that endures. So why not do the same with retirement? It is a time in which to refresh and rejuvinate myself -- to figure out "what's next?"

I reminisce about my first retirement. After five years of building a consulting practice, I was 40, drained, jaded and debilitated. I was a sinking ship. So, rather than sink, I sailed and lived aboard our 40' sloop as my husband and I adventured down the Intercoastal Waterway to Florida and over to the Bahamas and back. Retirement gave me bread baking and off-shore sailing skills, a draft of my first business book, 250 pages of letters and the insight to learn my third husband was not a keeper. When we hit the Annapolis dock almost six months later, I went to work the next day and had a condo bought and furnished with pictures on the walls within two weeks. This is what happens when a Type A retires to become a boat bum.


In the fall of 1998, at 50, I sold my ownership in a second consulting practice to my partner. Again, I was drained, jaded and debilitated, but not a sinking ship. I was optimistic and excited on this more formal occasion -- there was a party, gifts and parting speeches. Having learned from my previous retirement that unemployment is devoid of daily structure, I immediately took a job selling shoes at Nordstrom's (why not check out their customer service training by living it?). Within six weeks, I had lost five pounds but my feet smarted, so I resigned, only to morph into a couch potato endeavoring to unravel the riddle of "what's next?". Redecorating the house can only be done so many times on a limited budget.

"What's next?" turned out to be graduate school and a doctorate at age 54. I then transformed myself into Dr. Dorine for four years, the star of my own classroom. Then, it happened again, but this time I was baffled by academic politics and wanting for compensation. So, as I said in the commencement of this article, here I am again trying to figure out "what's next?" I'm scratching out a novel based on those sailing letters. It's creative, but the remoteness of Memphis is lonesome. I'm a webmaster volunteer for a non-profit, but it leaves me feeling discounted and underutilized. So, what's next?