What is “retirement”? Part 1 of 2 in Daydreaming on the Porch

I recently had the honor of learning that a scholarly research paper has been written just recently by a professor in Spain analyzing my online diary, which I started in 1999. I had known, and granted permission to him and several other academics several years earlier, to use my diary in their research. I received a draft copy earlier this month, and found the study to be highly accurate and insightful. It has greatly helped me understand the purpose of my Internet writing over many years.

The paper involved a qualitative and quantitative research analysis of my diary essay writing. I have been posting entries online for 26 years. The research involved analyzing my writing for a ten-year period as I contemplated retirement, actually retired, and then began the transition to retirement. Issues involved in the aging process and my years as a caregiver were included in the study.

Now at the age of 74, I am seven years into retirement, in the final stage of my life’s journey, which, as every life does, coalesces at the end into a final “narrative,” a term used in the paper frequently. As I read the paper, I could see that over the course of more than 1,200 separate diary entries, each of them actually short autobiographical essays on some topic or subject I wanted to explore and share with others, I realized that I was trying to make sense of, and understand my life through these numerous short essays. Naturally also, the topic of aging and all the physical, mental, emotional and intellectual ramifications of that play a major role in this research into my diary from the period 2013-2023, from ages 62-72.

The paper itself, which I have just completed reading, marks a milestone for me because in addition to all the many insightful and appreciative comments received over the years from many readers, a formal academic study of that writing validates even further the immense time and effort that has gone into the diary over decades, and which I continue to pour my heart and soul into today. It has been the single most rewarding, enlightening and deeply satisfying activity and accomplishment of my life, apart from my years as a caregiver for my mother. And, it would never have been possible without the internet, which was still a rather new and novel technology when I first embraced it in the mid-1990s. The online diary was the most significant of the many ways the Internet changed my life after age 45.

The paper hasn’t been published. But it has given me many new opportunities to reflect on what is becoming a long life, difficult as that is for me to comprehend.

As I entered my 60s, ideas and concepts about retirement started floating around in my head. I was so pre-occupied with caregiving and my job, that retirement seemed like some far-off Utopia. The earliest age I could retire with full Social Security benefits was 66, so I had a few years to go before that huge leap into another life.

As I look back I begin to view my life as a series of narratives and stories that have allowed me to look with new and fresh eyes and insights into the totality of my online diary writing over several decades. For instance, my frequent  essays/stories about Nature and the beauty of the natural environment where I live, are part of a larger narrative about what I value most in this life, and how Nature and my attunement  to its intricate details has allowed me to cope with numerous periods of stress, and to make more sense and meaning out of life in its totality.

I use every creative and imaginative tool I possess to make these final years of life more meaningful and productive than any other time in the past.  That is one reason time flies by so quickly for older folks such as myself.  

Additionally, I think we have to consider the idea of a “redefinition of the self” during aging and retirement. This is a fascinating concept to ponder. One thought is that while our “aging” self is undergoing incremental changes consistent with living a long life, whether these cumulative changes — physical, mental, spiritual, emotional — constitute a “redefinition”  of the self bears further thought and understanding as we consider all the ramifications of retirement and aging. How much have we changed over the years, or are we basically the same person we always were, just with more aches and pains, wrinkles, health concerns, wisdom, and heightened or lessened anxiety about death and dying, which we will confront much sooner now than when we were young and had all the time in the world.

Some of us elderly (I finally consider that term to include me at 74) deem “successful” aging not just in the sense of longevity, but in terms of both quality of life, as well as in the  ability to make sense of our lives, sum them up, and achieve a level of peace and contentment with what we have nurtured, achieved and become as human beings. As the end of life nears we thus become what we never could have imagined in our youth.

Writing and photography have been my compensation for not having other life blessings and fulfillments,  including children and grandchildren, for one, as well as other factors that make us complete persons in the sense of meeting our total needs as humans.  I lived my life as best I could given the incapacity to achieve some of the more basic human needs most people take for granted, willful or fated. I think we all do this to one degree or another.

Retirement is a period rich in transitions. We who are in this ultimate transition at the end of life when our jobs and careers are over, must at some point reckon with the idea of “identity transformation.” The roles of parent, worker, son, daughter, caregiver and careerist are over.  With the painful loss of work identity, some people may feel lost without the traditional bulwarks of self and identity and must see themselves in a different light.  They must be more self-reliant while at the same time accepting the limitations and creeping infirmities of age and thus prepare for the end of life, which means confronting one’s own mortality, often for the first time in a truly meaningful and honest way.

An  online diary, such as the one I kept for nearly three decades, is the perfect vehicle for sharing autobiographical narratives over a long period of time, writing that otherwise would not have occurred.  The main purposes of my diary were not only for me to tap into my memories and write about the “key transitions” in life I have experienced,  but to share those narratives of life with many others, who, through their comments and feedback, have enriched and enlarged my understanding of myself and the ways I have made sense of my life along its many stages or transitions. This has indeed altered my life trajectory because, as I  have noted many times to others, this 26-year-long online diary journey  has become over time my life’s greatest and most long-lasting and beneficial intellectual  activity, and social pursuit.  It has  made a huge impact on every aspect of my personal and social life.

Our story is never going to be over if we believe in a soul or spirit that will live on because it’s always been here.We are simply a temporary physical manifestation of it.  I know that as long as I can function cognitively, I will always wonder and marvel at what other people have to offer to me and others, and to the universe as  a whole.  And I will continue to learn something every day for the rest of my life.