Fear of Retirement

Currently, I’m midway through my first year of phased retirement. I’ve dropped to 70% effort (and 70% of my previous compensation). I can stay there for 4.5 more years, or drop to 50% or 30% effort and salary in later years. Or I can retire fully before 1 July 2024. It is a great luxury to be able to phase into retirement instead of accepting a buy-out and quitting cold turkey.

My dad retired at 62 or 63 from Martin-Marietta and Oak Ridge National Labs. But after moving to upstate NY, he continued to fabricate in his basement a device he’d patented, earning money for piecework for several more years before settling into retirement. My mom continued teaching correspondence courses online for several years after they moved. Even after retiring, my dad did volunteer work as the consulting engineer for the Covered Bridge Association of Washington County, and my mom volunteered as a child advocate for the state court in Bennington VT.

My brother and his wife (seven and ten years younger than me, respectively), retired last year and have since (1) cycled from the Colorado front range to Seattle and down the Pacific coast to San Francisco, (2) done the rim-to-rim hike in the Grand Canyon and (3) rode bikes and camped for eight weeks in Europe.

On the other end of the spectrum, I’ve seen older scientists obliged to retire when their spouses’ health started to decline. And in between, several of my colleagues quit their jobs cold turkey after looking forward to it for months or years.

Linda and I are in good physical health, and our consultants assure us that we are in sound financial health. So why not just quit and move on? Well, for my part, I’ve worked for so long be a tenured full professor and enjoy the lifestyle, so parking the car, leaving the keys in it and walking away cuts against everything I’ve sought for all my adult life. On the other side, I only have a few friends outside of work and although I have hobbies, they don’t occupy most of my waking hours every day, by design.

I’m forcing myself to make lifestyle changes: working out at the gym three days/week, logging more museum and theater time, reading more for pleasure. I still write for publication, and have come to appreciate how much writing means to me. Maybe this blog can be an outlet for that urge. I’ve always been a bit of a loner, but I’m not so naïve as to believe that I can be happy or a good partner for my wife without a community outside the home. That will be even more of a challenge if/when we move from St. Louis. I’ve always sought a road map before moving forward, and I haven’t found one yet for the retirement project.