After I retired at the end of July, I didn’t think I was ready to commit to anything related to my profession until November at the earliest. I really wanted to enjoy relaxed free time as long as the weather is good, which in my neck of the woods is usually through mid-autumn.
But then I was asked if I’d volunteer to teach a 2-hour “Introduction to R” workshop at the Gloria L. Negri First Amendment Institute this month. The request, which came in late August, definitely did not meet my timetable. However, it did tick a few other boxes I eventually wanted to start doing as a retiree:
Mentor early- and mid-career journalists. The Institute is a three-day training program on freedom of information law and investigative reporting techniques. Twenty-five working journalists in New England are chosen as fellows along with several journalism students, and all get to attend for free.
Stay involved with the R programming language and the R community, both of which I really enjoy.
Find a good balance between not over-committing and doing nothing.
Another point that seemed in its favor is that the topic was a basic R workshop. I’ve already written an introduction to R for journalists book, so I figured I’d just need to modify that for the audience, format, and available time instead of starting from scratch.
Finally, to be honest, it was nice to still be considered relevant in my field.
So I said yes.
Shortly after, though, I started stressing. Why did I impose a deadline on myself when I’d planned to be on a three-month vacation? Is this a sign that I won’t be able to set and keep boundaries to protect my precious new free time?
However, once I started working on my presentation, I enjoyed a good part of the process. It took more time than I’d hoped, but at least I liked doing much of the work.
The event itself, held at Northeastern University’s Curry Student Center, was interesting. I got to sit in on other presentations, including a compelling talk by Nikita Roy on generative AI and local journalism. And it was nice spending a couple of days in Boston.
Objectively, my presentation probably had mixed success, in part because I don’t think I was a great match for the audience. I typically speak either at R events, where people already know some R and are naturally interested in my topic; or larger tech-in-journalism conferences where there are enough people eager to learn programming. This was a small group who were mostly there to learn the craft of journalism, not specifically R or other technical skills.
Happily, some seemed interested; and I hope at least a few of the fellows decide to invest some time into learning more about R. In turn, I definitely learned something about this early stage of my retirement.
One thing I realized: It was nice to be working on something that I’m already knowledgeable about again. Putting together my R presentation gave me not only a feeling of accomplishment, but a feeling of being accomplished. I think I’ve read so much retirement advice about how great it is to branch out into new things that I was neglecting skills I already have.
If learning one or two new thing is good, that doesn’t mean three and four at once is even better. Learning something new from scratch is often frustrating. As one of the best-known R programmers, Hadley Wickham, has said: “The only way to write good code is to write tons of shitty code first.” It’s very rare to learn a difficult new skill and feel comfortable right away.
I’ve been trying to learn multiple new things the past few months while also figuring out how I want to be a retiree. That might not have been the best approach to kick off my next chapter. I’ve probably been overdoing it trying to learn a bunch of things each week all as a beginner: American Sign Language, Portuguese, Python, Python generative AI frameworks. . . . Even in college, I was taking some classes that built on knowledge I already had; everything wasn’t brand new. And college is when my entire focus was supposed to be expanding my knowledge!
I’ve decided its time to take my “How can I have the perfect retirement?” quest down a notch. I don’t have to learn four new things at once to prove to myself that my mind is still active. Hopefully I’ll have plenty of time to learn new skills instead of all in the first few months of my retirement!
So, I’m going to rebalance a bit to focus more on improving skills I already have while perhaps learning one or two new thing seriously at a time. Not four. I also still want to leave plenty of free time to see friends and family, go for walks, go biking, take and edit more photos, be a local tourist, and start traveling again.
I’ll also try to be diligent about making sure I’m a good fit for any future volunteering before I say yes.
One of my friends told me it would likely take awhile before I found the right mix of being active and enjoying free time. I’m ready for my first recalibration.
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