It’s been two years since I left my full-time job, at age 65, as managing editor of Next Avenue (the PBS website for folks 50+), and launched into unretirement.
I needed to share a couple of ideas about life in unretirement for folks occupied with doing it or who’re in it, in addition to the tales of two different people who find themselves at this crossroads.
One is Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez, 70, who simply marked the primary anniversary of the column he’s been writing in unretirement, The Golden State, about ageing in California. The different is John Kelly, a longtime Washington Post columnist who took a buyout at age 61 and is considering his subsequent chapter.
Steve Lopez: ‘Live your life’
For the previous 2 ½ years, Lopez has been working for the LA Times three-quarters of the time at three-quarters pay. He calls it a “modified hybrid retirement.”
Lopez works on his column day by day, however now has 12 weeks of trip time which he makes use of to journey along with his spouse and to see his daughter play in faculty tennis tournaments.
Reflecting on his hybrid retirement, Lopez advised me: “I really like it and I feel kind of lucky that I did it that way.”
The headline of his latest column reflecting on his 12 months writing The Golden State mentioned: “My decision to keep working didn’t just replenish me; it helped save me.”
Read: This isn’t ‘quiet quitting.’ How quitting — and retiring — can set you free.
Partly, Lopez advised me, working in retirement has been therapeutic after the demise of his son, at 43, two years in the past. “For me, it was a case of, ‘If you stand still, you’ll go crazy.’ So, I just kept working. I still am worried about full-stop retirement; I just get jittery when I don’t have to do something, when I don’t have a deadline.”
I really feel the identical manner.
It’s why I write The View From Unretirement column for MarketWatch, freelance for locations like Fortune, Next Avenue and AARP, volunteer most weekends and mentor faculty college students and up to date grads on the NYU Summer Publishing Institute, the place I’ll be its digital media methods director for the third consecutive 12 months this June.
Read: Volunteering may be key to a contented retirement. Why aren’t extra folks doing it?
My spouse, Liz, says I’m not retired. I say I’m. We conform to disagree.
Lopez advised me that interviewing folks of their 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 100s for his column has taught him about making essentially the most out of life at any age. He’s been stunned by how many individuals are thriving on this season of their lives.
Lopez’s new, inspiring position mannequin is considered one of them: Pete Teti, 100, who’s finding out fractal geometry and producing computer-driven artwork initiatives. Lopez wrote that Teti is “Exhibit A of the idea that all of us must age, but none of us have to get old.”
Lopez, a someday guitarist, says his greatest unretirement remorse has been not becoming a member of a storage band. But after writing his anniversary column, he acquired six affords to jam with others and says he plans to take one up.
Lopez’s recommendation: Don’t act your age; don’t even give it some thought.
“We tell ourselves we can’t do things because we’re a certain age, and it’s really B.S. If you want to do it, go ahead and do it,” Lopez mentioned. “I was a little nervous about taking up the guitar. It seems a little pathetic to me to be this age and looking at videos — How do I play this song or that song? But I’m glad I did it. I’m enjoying it and I’m getting better. So yeah, live your life.”
Read: ‘We all need purpose when we wake up in the morning’: Finding that means in retirement results in happiness and well being
John Kelly: ‘Who will I be next?’
John Kelly is determining how one can stay his life after leaving his perch on the Washington Post, the place he labored since 1989 and wrote roughly 4,600 day by day “John Kelly’s Washington” columns since 2004.
In considered one of his final of these columns, Kelly wrote: “I’m a little worried about what I’ll do next, about what I’ll be next.”
He advised me his spouse, Ruth, who retired in 2023 from her job as a lawyer for the satellite tv for pc trade (now an adjunct regulation faculty professor and board member), mentioned: “Oh, John, he’ll always be writing. He’s written every day for 30 years.”
Kelly advised me: “It’s too soon to say. I have a lot of ideas and I’ve always thought it would be nice to spend more time on each thing that I have been able to with a deadline every day. It might be nice to have a project that I spend weeks or months on.”
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His readers provided their recommendation, typically saying: Don’t leap into something too quickly. Kelly advised me he’s embracing that sentiment, utilizing his newfound free time to consider how one can assist his mother and father, clear out his storage, do some submitting, and spend extra time touring together with seeing his two daughters in England and Oregon and his of us in North Carolina.
He additionally may play extra with his band of older musicians: The Airport 77s.
Kelly’s excited, if slightly apprehensive, about his subsequent chapter. “I don’t feel like I have to win the lottery to enjoy the next however many years,” he mentioned.
One factor he’ll seemingly discover out, as I’ve throughout my most up-to-date 12 months of unretirement, is that life will throw curveballs. In my case, they’ve principally been about caregiving.
I’ve additionally had sudden work and volunteering alternatives come my manner, which I’ve been delighted to seize, but in addition a couple of initiatives I hoped I’d get however didn’t. Disappointing, sure, however not devastating.
I’ve the identical perspective as Lopez and Kelly: this stage of life is each what you make occur and typically simply what occurs.
Source web site: www.marketwatch.com
