“There are some who start their retirement long before they stop working.” – Robert Half
I really admire the people who are themselves. I have a couple of close friends whom I have also worked at the same company with. They seem to be the same people during work hours, as they are in their personal life. Maybe the operative word here is ‘seems’. I’m not in their heads. How could I know if they are rumbling with the same desire to break free as I am? We have never talked about this struggle.
It sure does feel like I’ve been waging a battle with myself these past 10-years. I’ve really tried to live my life authentically. With passion. With purpose. With empathy. With happiness. On all counts, it outwardly appears that I am doing a decent job. But, when my happiness starts to trail off, or if it was never solidly there to begin with, I find myself not being able to live according to any of the values I hold dear. I just can’t seem to project anything positive when I am suffering. As many of my bosses have pointed out to me in performance reviews, when you are unhappy it shows, (or something to that effect).
For me, the opposite of happiness is not sad. It is something more dramatic. Or it feels like that to me. I’m not just melancholy, I’m in the depths of whatever is ailing me at the moment. I almost teeter on the brink of a crisis. Full on amygdala highjack. Maybe this tendency towards drama is normal for me and I managed to suppress it in the beginning. When I was a child my Dad used to say, you are not freezing, nor are you starving.
My Dad was right. No-one in the corporate work world cares about what the youngest person in the room feels like, good or bad. They don’t even care what you think. You are there to learn. Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. Do the work you are assigned and try not to make mistakes. Learning to keep a lid on my emotions at work from a young age served me well, for many years. And then I woke up.
Fighting my own personality, my inclination, the way I’m made, has been exhausting. That my performance reviews warrant a rating of ‘good’ is a testament to how hard I struggle not to say what I really think to some of what goes on around me. I think the depleted state of mind and body at the end of a work day is due to the energy spent trying to be diplomatic in the face of so many other people throwing tantrums around me.
Retirement will be a complete reset. My energy can be directed towards myself in a way I’ve never managed before. For example, I’ve tried to be mindful of my health. I’ve half-heartedly watched what I ate and slipped exercise into my daily routine. I know that a walk in the evening will help me sleep better, but I feel spent by that point in the day. The effort of putting on shoes, seems too much for me. When doctors espouse the benefits of diet and exercise as the ‘easy’ way to be healthy, the advice seems like a cruel joke. Honestly, who has the time or energy to undertake a pivot in behaviour like this?
Early retirement is just the kind of pivot I have in mind. Having the time and freedom from the corporate structure is going to allow a complete reset. By that I mean a new way of looking at the world and at myself. No longer will I need to limit my observation of the world around me to what I might be able to incorporate into my work. I won’t have the autopilot running in the background of my mind that brings work issues to the fore at odd times on the weekend and on holidays. Rather, all that creative reserve can be directed towards my projects and interests fully.
This reprioritization is fundamental. It is a reorientation back towards what is best for me. That can be a statement and a question. After all the time that has passed, I’m not entirely clear what is best for me. I only know what I’ve managed to fit into my life, on the outskirts of my work schedule. To be fair, for many years, even my non-work time was not my time. There were my young children who needed me. I tried to be a good partner to my husband. Everything and everyone else fell down the list.
Living for myself might mean, honouring how my body feels in the moment. Not pushing through just because my intention for the day was one thing while my energy level is telling me something different. Respecting the ways which my best self is revealed. On the surface, learning how to paint with watercolours sounds like an easy proposition. Yet, I have not learned how to see the shapes of the world around me. The light and the dark, the near and the far, the high and the low, all the contrasts which give the visual world such context and mystery. It is kind of like I’ve been blind.
By being so focused on my goals, I’ve been able to tune out all distractions. The sounds which are annoyances, diminish for me. (Good thing or I would not tolerate living in the city on a busy road). But I’m only slightly aware of birdsong, or the sound of the wind. I’ve done the same with visual distractions and even the lack of beauty or nature. What is or isn’t there in the view beyond my computer screen doesn’t capture my attention. Then there are the people who are not very kind. I’ve been surrounded by varying degrees of these folks over the years. Again, I can pretty well tune them out, or at least the episodes when they are having a tantrum.
This skill of elimination is well developed. Now it is time to be additive. Living for myself can be a time of building up sights, sounds, tastes, smells and interpersonal dynamics which are healthy for me. That is such a good summary for my writing today. How am I adding what is good for me today?
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