When I was working full time, it irked me no end when one of my retired friends or relatives talked about how “busy” they were. Um, really? How did they think their “busy” schedule would look if they added in five days a week of employment? Unless they had caregiving responsibilities or medical issues, how could they possibly tell those of us trying to squeeze the rest of our lives around 40+ hours of work responsibilities they were “busy”?
Now I’m on the other side. Some of my days do indeed feel “busy” – something I will never say to any of my friends face-to-face who are still working, by the way – but in a different way. The closest experience to this I had while working was during the week off between Christmas and New Years. Because that was “extra” time off and I’ve always hated traveling during peak vacation periods, I tended to stay home, putter around the house, read, play on the computer, and do low-key things with friends. But that still wasn’t quite the same as retirement, because I knew a post-holiday work ramp-up loomed.
Doctor’s appointments aside (and those do tend to increase in number as one gets older, even for those who generally have good health), my “busy” days so far are still mostly more relaxed, more pleasant, and less stressed. I wake up later. I build in more space. I don’t feel the same pressure to get as much in as possible before going back to work. There’s no hum of Work Things in the back of my mind at times as I sometimes had on vacation. And there’s no work email to check.
I’m still programming, but only for projects that I want to create. I’m attending professional meetings, but only those that interest me. And I’m still writing, but only what I want.
Basically, I’m getting “less done” in a day, especially during these first two months that I’ve deemed an extended decompression vacation while the weather’s still nice. (What comes after, who knows?) And I feel surprisingly fine about being “less productive” now, in a way my younger, go-go self might not have been. It feels like I’m recalibrating my life, trying figure out what level of activity I want, as opposed to combining what I wanted in my life with what external social cues were telling me.
Mainstream American culture respects “busy”, and often doesn’t value what the Italians call “dolce far niente” – the sweetness of doing nothing. It’s a bit ironic how many Type A Americans of my generation traveled to Italy to fawn over small town life in places like Tuscany – lingering over lunch, spending an afternoon at a cafe with friends, enjoying the leisurely la passeggiata (evening stroll) – yet would probably consider Americans back home trying to craft a life like that to be unambitious and even lazy.
I enjoyed a pace like that several times when visiting friends in Europe in the late spring and summer. And I envied it – but couldn’t possibly figure out how to craft something like that for myself in the U.S. while in the midst of a demanding career that I also wanted very much.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any suggestions for readers who are still working on how to improve work-life balance. I didn’t exactly do a great job of it myself through much of my career. And it’s not only a matter for individuals – work cultures and societal pressures play big roles, too. For a lot of careers in America, it’s not easy to do work you like, and also carve out enough time for other things in your life, and pay your bills. As the joke goes about fast, cheap, or good – pick any two.
But I do have some words of advice for people toward the end of their careers who find the idea of slowing down potentially appealing but wonder if they’ll miss the hard-driving days of their full-time careers:
If you’re hearing an internal voice asking if it might be time to slow down and step back, listen to it. Sit with it. Ask yourself “What do I want now?” Not what you used to want, what you think you should want, or how you worry others might view you.
Only you know if and when you’ll be emotionally ready for retirement (finances, of course, are a separate but critical issue) and giving up a full-time professional identity. But I am discovering that there’s more than one way to live a happy life.
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