The Grass is Always Greener

My wife thinks I am crazy because I keep looking at part time job postings on Craigslist.

"Why do you want to go back to some hellhole?" she wonders. Good question.

The simple answer is: I don't know. The more complicated and (potentially fictitious) reason is that I am  looking to find my place in the cosmos. One thing seems clear. I am restless with my status as "Retiree".

Being retired from the world of work is wonderful in many respects. You can sleep as late as you want in the morning. You have time to read the print versions of 2 papers, and have an unhurried breakfast. You can pretty much plan your day - take a walk, have lunch with friends, go to a movie.

Theoretically, you can golf and fish and wander around to your heart's content. You don't have some crazed boss demanding a status report, or wondering aloud at the staff meeting why your numbers aren't better. You don't waste two hours a day sitting in traffic. For once in your life, you finally have enough time for those extended trips to exotic places that you always talked about.

 
On the other hand, there are some drawbacks. You can't just sit around reading for hours on end and communing with nature every day, or napping like the cats. Anything gets boring if you do it day-in day-out.  Traveling can become both a distraction and a delight, but it does not fulfill you - unless you consider checking-off your bucket list as fulfillment.  And, there is the little matter of money.

If you are retired and rich, it makes things much easier.  But if you retired, collecting social security and have less than mega-millions in your  IRA, you are forced to make some trade-offs.   You cannot afford to travel all the time, and you cannot shop for trendy clothes or afford $40 haircuts anymore.

When I was younger, I was fulfilled by spending time in the garden and maintaining the grounds. I never thought of working in the yard as work because I enjoyed it thoroughly. Work is what someone else makes you do.

Nowadays, I don't anticipate Spring the same old way. The optimistic joy of gardening has gradually given way to reality-based discouragement, the groaning of stiff knees, achy backs and wildly unpredictable weather.

I have become pessimistic about climate and cynical about politics and skeptical towards anyone who claims to know the truth, has a cure for psoriasis, knows the secret to riches, wants to manage my money.
Parkinsons Law states that work fills the time allotted to it. There is a corollary to free time. If you only have one thing to do today, it will take all day to do it. We retirees are always complaining how busy we are.

Working people envy retired people. Buy after you have read two papers end-to end and checked the status of the markets, and taken a brisk walk, met friends for lunch, and so on, there is still a vague sense that something is missing.  It's that old feeling that you occasionally felt on the job that you were accomplishing something bigger than just staying busy.

Some mornings on my walk, I find myself looking at young people driving by, dressed for work with a tinge of envy. I know that odds are good that  they are probably on their way to some hellhole where the boss is overwrought asshole and the coworkers are backbiting shits.

But I can't help wondering if just maybe someone is actually  going to a place where the work is interesting and rewarding and their workmates are bright and positive with good sense of humor. To me, that would seem to be a pretty good way to spend one's day.

Ch-ch-changes

Although I generally think of myself as retired,  I have kept up an interest in keeping active and involved with the working world.   In early December I answered a job ad on Craigslist for a Shipper at a small local nonprofit publishing company.  The job description contained many of the elements that I want in a job:
      ·         local – this outfit was a 6 minute drive,
      ·          modest commitment of time -  two  mornings a week (8hrs max) ,
      ·         some physical activity – 70% of the job was not sitting in front of a computer,
      ·         A decent hourly rate – $15 which is a few bucks above the min. wage.

During the interview, I learned that the job involved entering transactions on the database the picking packing and shipping.  I have always been a fan of the fulfillment process.  At various times in my career I have worked at big companies, helping to design and implement optimal processes for order entry, through the distribution cycle to billing and receipt.  On my resume I used to claim to be an IT fulfillment expert.  

But those high flying glory days are long ago and far away.  These days I swing on low hanging branches.  This opportunity appeared  to  be an easy way to get a paid workout and lend some structure to my distinctly unstructured week.  The two women who interviewed me apparently saw that I was a trustworthy guy who would show up and get things done.  So I accepted the offer with a modicum of hope and enthusiasm.

However after two weeks of training it became clear that this was not turning out to be what I had expected.  It was a very small operation, with only 2 full timers and only one other part timer ( the Accountant).  The physical part of the job – schlepping boxes of books, packing and filling orders – was relatively easy to learn and well within my strength and endurance capabilities.  After several weeks I had established a fairly good routine for getting the shipping and stocking work done.

But the job also involved key-entry of order data into a MAC  Filemaker Pro database.  This was a customized system that was probably considered "state of the art" in 1991.  It was clunky, and I was slow.  The gal who I was reporting to was impatient with my tedious keyboarding skills and several times during the training, she would exasperatedly reach over and hit the key that I was searching for.   When I told her not to do that, she developed a scowl that became ever-present when she and I were in the same room.    

I have never been very good at labor intensive activities myself.   Perhaps this realization was the motivation  for the role that I enjoyed most in my professional life:  helping other people work more efficiently.

Since retiring and entering the world of part-time work, I have had to come to terms with the realization that employers were not looking for their part-timers to be problem solvers or major contributors; they just wanted an efficient, interchangeable part - An easily replaceable working unit who does not ask questions or offer suggestions for improvement.  Ideally, they’d prefer a robot.  

I admit that I am not always patient or compliant.  Like most adults, I dislike supervision.  I can be stubborn – a tendency which I blame on my Irish and Dutch genes.  There was a lot of supervision and not much congeniality.  I expected a laid-back atmosphere, but was disappointed to find the chill of no-nonsense efficiency to be the prevailing wind.

This may sound like a self-serving rationalization for my decision to quit the job, but after a few weeks, I just did not see things getting better.   One of the chief reasons I quit my last job (at AAA), was because  they would not even discuss the possibility of improving the process (too costly), and yet they blamed the hapless counter people for making errors on a system that was neither logical or intuitive.  This was pretty much the same situation. 

At my age, I feel that I should not endure anything that I dislike if I can help it.  So, it is with little regret that I say sayonara and good luck.  Every experience is an education; even if it is not always fun.

Have I given-up on my quest to become usefully employed?  No.   My daughter has encouraged me to follow her interests in mediation training.  She seems to think that I would enjoy helping people find solutions to conflicts.  I am giving it serious consideration.   I demur, because the cynical part of my ego suspects that it is too late -- that I have become a hopelessly grumpy old fart who will never be satisfied with any job.

Hope still lives – I am starting Yoga lessons next week.  Flexibility and inner peace, here I come!

Soft Landings

In today's Boston Globe there was a nicely done essay by Susan Trausch.  You can read it if you click here.  She took a buyout from the Globe five years ago at age 59.  After 32 years at the same company, her transition from work to retirement was "complicated."    She has written a book* about her personal period of adjustment, (which I plan to read if I ever have any free time.)

The op-ed piece titled "Retirement's Soft Landings" offers a bit of tongue-in-cheek advice to celebrities who have publicly announced their imminent retirement (Oprah, Joe Torre, Richard Daly).

Trausch nails it when she talks about the  bitter-sweet transition after waving goodbye to your career and workmates,

" Oh the tyranny of time managed poorly. The tyranny of time at work was so different, mainly because time was in charge and knew what it was doing. There were bosses, assignments, schedules, deadlines, and a gross domestic product to consider. At home there is complete freedom and an easily distracted human being can spend days drifting from leaky garden hose to unread New Yorkers to hunting for the grocery list that must have blown off the counter to e-mail to the daily crossword puzzle that is supposed to keep the mind focused"

As faithful readers of this blog well know, your humble scribe has been wrestling with retirement issues since he escaped from the hellhole several years ago.  As one who has never been bored, I found retirement to be exceedingly liberating.  Suddenly, no one is telling you what to do, where to be, what time to show-up, and how to get there.  You think: This is how life should be!  

I changed the name of the blog from "Hellhole Update" to "Escape from the Hellhole" to celebrate the new found feeling of having emerged from a cage.  I was happy, delighted and at peace.  Now I was free to do anything I wanted to do.  Fishing, traveling, reading, meeting friends for lunch, catching up on the lengthy to-do list... And I did enjoy doing those things.

But having all that freedom is not without it's drawbacks.  When people ask me, "How do you like retirement?" my answer is: "Overall I am delighted to be at leisure.  However, every few months, I get this vague feeling that I am missing something, that I am not doing anything important.  I start to worry (again) that the missus and me will outlive our nest egg." 
I have probably bored my loyal readers with the recurrent observation that most normal adults  do not experience unqualified happiness for very long (and this is well explained by Maslow's theory, The Hierarchy of Needs).     Our brains are creative goal-seeking mechanisms, so we cannot be satisfied with the status quo, because new goals keep forming as long as the brain is functioning.  (Hmmn, maybe this last condition explains why some people are deliriously happy in retirement. )

Fortunately, this "uncertain phase" does not last for very long**.  I usually respond to the vague noodgy feelings of insignificance by looking at part time job ads for high paying opportunities within walking distance of home.  There are virtually no part time jobs, unless you want to become a replaceable part, working for an indecent hourly wage, on the worst shift.  So, I usually get over this phase pretty quickly.  Then, I make some lunch plans or go fishing. 
And, for a time,  all is right with the world.

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*Trausch's newly published book: "Groping Toward Whatever Or How I Learned To Retire, Sort Of.’’

** My wife attributes this "uncertainty" to mild seasonal depression. She was an English major in college but feels that she is  fully qualified to diagnose my mental state.

Labored Thoughts

Some of the newcomers to this blog may have been misled by the use of the term "afterlife" in the blog description.  If you thought I was talking about some spiritual or cosmic afterlife, I apologize (- - for your poor reading skills.  Really, you must learn to read more carefully.)

No, afterlife, in this context, refers to that phase of life between the time you surrender the responsibilities and commitment to The Job, The Career, the Kids, the Unfinished Novel and your untimely death.   Unlike the promised heaven or hell that your preachers have guaranteed to be the reward for your behavior in this life, this blog uses the term to allude to the shadowy existence of people (such as I)  who have retired from the hustle and bustle of everyday commerce, the classroom or even  the mind-shredding boredom of a career spend nuzzling the teat of the government.

Retirement and Heaven may seem to be synonymous for many working stiffs, as they fantasize about the Rewards that surely must await those who have patiently endured the slings and arrows of the average job. The gauzy image of that much anticipated state of Nirvana may populate the daydreams of countless oppressed and misused worker bees as they toil under the debt-fueled fear of losing this crappy job ( -- undoubtedly made even crappier by some micromanaging nitpicker.)
In the work-a-day world, time is money; you are typically paid commensurate with the amount of time you spend in the office.  You get accustomed to the idea that someone values your time.  However, as you settle into the afterlife, you gradually realize that your time has zero value to others.  No one pays you for reading the newspapers while dawdling over a leisurely breakfast.  There is no bonus for biggest fish.  Your below- par performance at the links may actually require you to buy the beers for the other duffers.  No one calls from the office disturbing you at inconvenient moments with career threatening emergencies. 

Work is largely regarded by American society as a no-fault excuse to avoid social and familial obligations.  ("Gee I'd love to go over and see the 300 photos of your niece's baby shower, but, well I am just slammed here at the office.  Maybe another time...")  But, now that you do not have work as a refuge, you are assailed by family and friends who need a favor or a spouse who demands that you accompany them on errands.

So, young retiree wanabees, I am afraid I must give it to you straight on this Labor Day.  You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?  Another day older and deeper in debt. Then you retire and spend most of the time checking your retirement nest egg, wondering when the shitty economy is going to start being over.  And, hoping that the government can stay solvent and keep sending you that anticipated SS check.

Instead of  enjoying your free time with  travel, fishing and playing golf, you spend a third of your week at the doctors office getting looked at, prodded and listened to.  The exams become ever so much more intimate each year.  Or if it is not your ass that the doc has his finger up, you are driving someone else to his-or-her appointment.  (No one hesitates to ask you for a ride, since you are retired and probably have nothing better to do.)