Stages of Life – My Next Chapter: A Retirement Journey

Decades, like “generations”, are somewhat artificial constructs. Cultural changes aren’t always separated by years ending in zero!

However, counting by 10 seems to resonate with the human brain. Maybe because it aligns with our number of fingers? Whatever the reason, I often look back at the story of my life so far in rough 10-year increments.

The age-10-to-20 student years. My 20s, when I transformed from student to married adult with a career. And so on. I have mental markers for periods in my, like: Learning R and working on data journalism projects. Planning and enjoying multiple trips to Europe with good friends. Engaging in a lot of ham radio activity and getting involved trying to help radio friends in Bosnia during the war there.

And now: the wind-down-my-career-and-retire period.

But aging isn’t linear. Kids who are growing all the time don’t change at the same rate every year; there are often growth spurts. For us adults, Stanford Medicine found two “massive biomolecular shifts” as we get older: in our 40s and our 60s.

“We’re not just changing gradually over time; there are some really dramatic changes,” Michael Snyder, PhD, professor of genetics and the study’s senior author, told Stanford News. “It turns out the mid-40s is a time of dramatic change, as is the early 60s. And that’s true no matter what class of molecules you look at.”

I don’t remember feeling major changes in my 40s, although it does seem to be a time when even most world-class athletes can’t keep up anymore.

But my 60s? Oh yes. My doctor, who belongs to a sports medicine practice as well as seeing patients like me 😂, gently warned me several years ago that major physical changes happen in our 60s. When I told him about my finish in the 60-to-69 group at a 5K last fall, he said it would have been more fair to break that into two groups: 60 up to 65, and 65-69. And boy was he right.

My fitness watch tells me that my VO2 max – a measure of cardio fitness – has gone from 38 a couple of years ago to 36 and even 35 now when I run. And while Garmin says that VO2 max is still “excellent” for a woman in her 60s . . . just two or three years ago I was pretty close to “good” for a woman in her 20s. I was proud of that. It’s over.

I can work to try to keep myself in good shape for the stage of life I’m at now - which is the plan! But even Tom Brady couldn’t keep himself in the shape he was in a decade ago once he reached that first big change period. It seems unrealistic to expect that I can in the other.

Calendar of life’s progression

In trying to make sense of my story so far, I’ve sometimes thought about fitting the 10-year patterns of a life into the model of a calendar year. That is, does it fit to think:

The early 0 through 10 years are like the start of Spring in April.
Years when we blossom from 10 through our teens are like May.
Fledgling adulthood in our 20s are like June.

And so on.

I’ve found it an interesting if imperfect model. Were my 50s like September? Sort of. I love September weather and harvest foods, but the month also marks the end of something I love a lot (summer). And for me, my 50s were an intense mix of fun trips and wrenching loss. In the span of 15 months, my mother, my father, and one of my closest friends passed away. Like all of us after loss, I’m not the same.

Now? The lifespan-as-calendar model would put me in October. The analogy, while a bit frightening, still seems apt. October is a great month – crisp gorgeous days, apple picking, apple cider, glorious foliage, some major holidays are coming up . . . but also shorter days, some cutting winds, weaker sunshine. And, there’s a big difference (at least here in New England) between the beginning of October and the end.

There are days in early October that can seem like mid-September. And there are days at the end of the month that feel a lot like November. It’s a fun time. But if winter is your least favorite season, harbingers of less pleasant things to come are harder to ignore.

Yet even with bleak weather and cold dark days in store, there are still nice things on the horizon in those later months, such as Thanksgiving, one of my favorite holidays. And now that I’m retired, there may even be the possibility of escaping the cold and darkness by travel, at least for a while.

My aunt, now in her 90s, told me once that her 60s and 70s were some of the best times in her life. She had a lot of fun with my Mom – auditing college classes, going to the theater, visiting and volunteering at museums, and other things. Of course this depends on having good health . . . and no matter how fortunate we may be, at this age almost all of us “have something,” as my aunt also says. If we’re lucky, that “something” isn’t too bad (yet).

But also at this age, even if we’re fortunate, it’s hard not to notice that an increasing number of our peers are not. I discovered last week that one of my childhood friends passed away. And a list was posted recently of all the people in my high school graduating class who are known to have died. It was sobering.

A different outlook in retirement

I think I’m absorbing these facts of growing older differently now that I’m retired. I was more mentally and emotionally tied to mid-life when I was working full time, even if my chronological mid-life had been behind me for awhile.

Maybe that’s one of the attractions of still working even for people with the financial resources to retire? Mid-life seems closer on the job if you’ve spent your adulthood working full time than once you step away.

So, I guess this week I’ve realized something new about being retired: It’s a little harder for me to ignore the ticking clock. As much as I love so many things about not working full time, and appreciate some things about being older – better knowing who I am, worrying a little less about what other people think, not stressing about advancing my career, and being a teensy bit less tightly wound – I need to acknowledge that it’s not all upside.

What to do about it? I definitely don’t want to spend the rest of the days I have left either pining away for the past or dreading the future. The ideal result would be to better appreciate every day as a gift. But as someone who’s, um, not naturally an optimist but is a world-class catastrophizer, it’s tough not to get blue when I think about some of the things that are down the road for us all.

The best answer I’ve come up with so far, is to try to cultivate the mindset of our meditation teacher. He kept stressing that the only thing that’s actually real is the moment we’re in now. The rest is only in our minds. The past and the future are just thoughts.

We shouldn’t ignore the future! Things happen, and it helps to be ready for them. But there’s a difference between useful planning and needless obsession. I’ll be on the lookout for that sweet spot.