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Michael McLeod
May have mentioned this already but as of this week I am finally utterly retired. I retired from full time work at the newspaper down here in orlando ten years ago but had continued to freelance write and teach a writing class at a nearby college until a couple of weeks ago.
What i want to admit is that along with the relief and overall cheer I anticipated I have an underlying feeling that I never suspected I would have when I retired:
I'm scared.
It's just a jittery fleeting shadow of a feeling that comes and goes and takes me by surprise when it does.
Went to my gp and among the latest batch of pills I have a prescription of something to take when I experience anxiety.
The fact that according to the formula that the modern medical system has come up with on behalf of me dictates that because I am retired I suddenly need pills to take for anxiety has the effect of....making me even more anxious.
How that for irony, folks? I mean it's like I came up to you and looked you in the eyes and said: Aren't you really really worried?
I bet you my grandfather would have taken another approach.
He had a long career as a gp and a practice that involved never leaving home. He lived in a brick two story on east main street and his office had been built separately and attached to the front parlor - you'd go through a double-door affair and one instand you were in a carpeted, high-ceilinged, sun-through elegant curtained window affair into this boxy little office and examining room. The house still stands, it's right next to a catholic church, st. ann's if memory serves. As little kids we played in the blacktopped parking lot/basketball court affair outside the elementary school that was attached to the church, as I recall. I still have my grandfather's stethescope. His name was Ernest Victor Reutinger.
Anyway here I am cleaning house and as part of that I'm going over my file of stories written over 40 years as a journalist, including some that won national awards. And on one hand I'm proud as I go through them. But some I can't even remember writing. It's just a little freaky; thinking well of myself and knowing my bulb has dimmed with age and I couldn't write that kind of story at this point no matter how much money they offered me. Speaking of current events and Mark's situation, somewhere in this batch of old stories I'm going through I might find the stories I wrote when there was a forest fire down here -- no, Florida is not all beaches; there are tons of pine forests down this way. I remember coming home from that assignment and that the clothes I had worn had to be thrown out because they were so permeated by the scent of burning wood. Sounds like a story I should share with my kids.
In the meantime I am kept from getting too jittery by the gorgeous Florida sunlight; the presence of my son, who lives next door; by conversations and messaging with my daughter, who's in Dayton; and most of all by the firm tutelege of a fabulous and somewhat younger life partner who likewise lives in a beautiful home a couple miles away, teaches at a public grade school nearby -- and handles me, I kid you not, with pretty much the same no-nonsense approach she uses with younger charges. And I'm still going to write just a bit but not for pay. My latest assignment, this one generated and sternly overseen by said life partner, is to write a narrative about my newspaper career and its consequent travels and trials for the benefit of my two children, one here-- that being Taylor, who's a waiter at a very nice restaurant down here, and Michele, who lives in a Dayton suburb and works at a pharmacy.
I just wondered if anyone else has ever had that jittery and somewhat melancholy feeling i mentioned about retirement. It's just so....ironic, though utterly logical, that after looking forward to retiring I'm somewhat uneasy about it now that I'm living it out. "Asi es la vida," I guess. That's not exactly an answer, more of a neutral observation -- and acceptance. Which is a hell of a lot more logical than walking around being worried. Yet for the moment I can't help it. To be honest with you I'm alone and on the verge of tears at the moment.
This is a lot more intimate than I usually am on this site, or anywhere, for that matter, so I hope it's of interest to you, and that I haven't overstepped or made too much of myself or revealed too much or whatever. Hope you are all well and...I guess I'd welcome any advice, if you have any in mind, when it comes to the challenges of retiring.
At least I don't have any wildfires headed my way. So far.
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