Pat Taub
GUEST POST by GWEN McCAULEY
Here I am thinking of ‘retiring’ for a second time after officially retiring 25 years ago.
That first time I retired I received a generous buy-out package from a major telecommunications company after 20 years of hard work and much success. I knew the world was changing. I knew that the aspects of corporate life that helped me be successful and satisfied would no longer be there. I would have to find a new path.
Post-retirement I became a life coach, writer and tour guide. My work took off through existing clients and word-of-mouth referrals. Even though I’ve maintained several websites, I have done very little proactive marketing. Heck, I’ve even become negligent in keeping my sites up-to-date.
So when I got a notice a few weeks ago that a couple of my URL’s needed renewal, it got me thinking. “What am I doing here?” I asked myself, “Why can’t I be bothered to reflect my current interests and commitments?”
Gwen, as life coach, one of her post retirement careers
And so I cancelled them all, clear that that old me, that old way of working is no longer valid. But does it mean that I’m done? Or have things just simply shifted for me?
And then a big penny thought dropped. Was I, in fact, contemplating full ‘retirement’ from any public promotion of my skills and services? At 72 was I contemplating a future I’d thought I’d never consider: full retirement?
Since then I’ve been floating in this sea of uncertainty. Am I done? Who will I be without a professional presence? What will it be like to introduce myself as “Hi, I’m Gwen” . . .no more “Hi, I’m Gwen. I’m a writer, a coach, a tour guide”. Do I still count if I’m not contributing as a businesswoman? If so, in what way?
My uncertainly isn’t about ‘counting’ to the outside world, I’ve come to realize. It’s about whether I ‘count’ to me. I started working for pay at age 14. I started working at age 2, taking care of younger kids, being a good little helper to my overburdened mother.
I’m coming to grips with the fact that much of my self-identity is tied to being a worker. I’ve never before seen myself as someone who would retire. Someone who would live off the rewards of past work efforts.
Gwen arrived at the realization that much of her identity relied on being a “worker.”
This feels like a subtle crisis for me. I know myself to be a person of worth, independent of my occupation or ability to earn income. Or at least I thought I knew that to my core.
These days I’m uncertain. Not freaked out but definitely uncertain. And how will I know if and when I’m finally ready for this state called ‘retirement’? That’s the uncertainty I take forward with me.
Gwen is not “freaking out” over her uncertainty but sitting with it until a new path emerges.
What I do know is that clarity about my future will surface and reveal itself to me under certain circumstances: if I stay open to the unsettling thoughts that surface, if I allow myself to play with the assumption that new things can still happen to me. If I stay present to the tensions I discover in my body and deal with them as they surface, I will slowly pick my path through what feels like the fog bank of this latest life decision to finally arrive at a place of clarity.
So am I retiring for a second time? Who knows? Too early to tell. Perhaps next week, next month or next year I will know. But right now what I am clear about is that the work I have been doing and the ways in which I’ve been doing that work no longer work for me.
Gwen, open to a new path in her post retirement journey
It’s time for a change. And that clarity, combined with a willingness to remain uncertain will lead to the greater clarity of what this old gal’s future holds. And so I take the next step on my uncertain path. I wonder what will be revealed in the taking of that step?
Gwen McCauley: writer, author, life coach. Gwen helps businesses and academics present themselves to a lay audience. She writes about personal growth, sexuality and aging, Gwen splits her time between Halifax, Nova Scotia — Canada’s Ocean Playground and the Algarve, Portugal. www.gwenmccauley.ca
