I’m planning a meaningful retirement. So how will my transition into retirement happen? Will I dive right in? Or will I dip a toe in the water first?
This is the year I enroll in Medicare. With the unpredictability of health insurance premiums, I’ve looked forward to this event for years. Well, here it is, and looming just behind it is the big leap into retirement.
For years I’ve thought I’d go into retirement gradually, the way you ease yourself into a pool of chilly water, one cringing step at a time until you’re fully immersed and realize you can actually enjoy the transition. I’ve envisioned an ever decreasing workload from five days a week, to four, then three, etc. But lately, I’m considering a different kind of transition.
Reconciling Meaningful Work and Retirement
I enjoy my work in occupational therapy as well as the income it supplies. I get enormous satisfaction from being able to help people. When I see the look of relief on a patient’s face in that moment they realize that, yes, they will be able to toilet, dress, or bathe themselves independently with the knowledge and skill I provide them, it brings me utter joy! It gives my work so much meaning, I wonder how I will ever be able to leave it.
At the same time I have to grapple with the ever increasing frustration, anger, and just plain meanness I see in patients and their families as a result of COVID fatigue. It makes me want to walk away from my work and become a recluse.
The kind of work I do requires an open-heart that allows patients to open up and trust me. It requires a willingness to risk a bruised ego and scalded feelings. It often exhausts me emotionally and physically so that when I finish work at the end of the day, I don’t want to engage with anyone, including my family and friends. I just want to go home, shut myself in my office and heal my own wounds, recoup my strength and energy so I can go out and do it again the next day. But, I work in home health, so after I get home there is more work to do and I still have to call and speak to patients or their family members to schedule the next day’s work. I drain the rest of my energy for this part of the day’s work.
Even so, I love this work and am so grateful I have had the opportunity to do it.
Still, there is the fact that I am getting older, my energy has decreased, and my spirit is increasingly more battered at the end of every day.
I know I am tired and much of my leaning toward retiring sooner rather than later is a result of that deep, prolonged fatigue we’ve all suffered through COVID. I try to quell the nervousness I feel about retirement with the ever-growing a list of activities I want to explore more deeply in retirement: genealogy, writing, painting, dancing, creating new creative products, working on all kinds of puzzles and sewing and gardening and…well, lots of stuff that I haven’t had time to do.
But all those activities, fun and exciting though they may be, will not replace that joyful and most fulfilling experience of knowing I have helped someone keep their independence.
A Bridge to Meaningful Retirement
Whether I go into retirement gradually, or if I decide to become part of The Great Resignation, I have decided to build a bridge to that satisfaction through writing for the population I now serve as an occupational therapy practitioner. I have some experience with this through my book. So it feels natural to devote a good part of my website and my Medium presence to articles on aging in place.
After I retire, I may not get to see the relief on client’s faces, but I do know that my words (and videos?) can lead them to safer practices and skills to regain and maintain their independence in their own home.
I will still get to practice meaningful work, though it may not pay as well, but I won’t have to subject myself to face to face abuse and disrespect from frustrated people that are exhausted by the strictures of a society that refuses to effectively deal with COVID.
If necessary, I can shut down hateful commenters and replenish my energy and spirit, giving freely without risking as much as I do now.
I am not ready to take the big leap just yet, but I’m edging closer to it one tiny step at a time. And I am at peace with my decision.