Post #3305: What next?

The last few days have been a blur of house guests and a weekend-long community event that took over the arts hall with the textile/social/art event Refugia. I’m so grateful for the day off work today to recover from it all and nurse the mild cold I picked up. I slept nearly ten hours from last night until this morning and am puttering in the kitchen with some pressure canning (pinto beans) and dehydrating (apple rings). I have laundry in the dryer and plans to even maybe get the garlic planted before my afternoon workout. We’ll see. It’s nice just taking it easy – something I don’t do often enough.

I’ve been thinking a lot about retirement lately—what I’ll want to do, and what it might be like to live by my own schedule all the time (or at least most of it, there will always be family needs and other musts to attend to, I’m sure). In my entire working life, which began at age 15, I’ve never taken more than two weeks off in a row, except for one month in 1994, when I went to Indonesia. I never took a “gap year” to travel, and I’ve never income-averaged my salary to take an extended break. From 15 until (almost) 53, I’ve lived by the schedules of school and work, fitting everything else around them.

On one hand, I’ve been fortunate with good health, steady work, and family stability that I’ve never had to take extended time off. On the other, I have little idea what it means to live in a less structured way. I’m also very tired of working. Still, I can thank young Megan for prioritizing a job with a good pension above all else, because soon—two and a half years from now, or maybe even sooner—I’ll have the chance to discover what life feels like out of harness, something many people never get to do.

The maybe sooner is what has me thinking about this so actively at the moment, as the government budget announcement last week introduced a program that may allow me to retire a year and a half earlier than planned—by the end of 2026 instead of mid-2028. This is far from a done deal at the moment, first the budget must be voted on, and then the initiative itself explained in more detail—but it’s been an interesting possibility to toy with. What does one do when they aren’t forced into the structure of work? How does one make a structure of their own, that supports one’s own interests and activity?

On a very surface level, I’m not worried about this as I have a lot I want to do, a community of people with whom I work, and a strong dose of internal discipline. But as my shadow knows, there are a lot of things work is covering up for, giving me an excuse not to do or think about. Being busy is one way to avoid the self. Making a lot of noise covers up the quieter questions. And so on. As much as I have always craved freedom from work and routine, it makes me anxious as hell. It’s definitely a case of feeling all the feelings right now.

Having been a union rep for so much of my career, I spent a lot of time talking to people at all stages of their working life, so I know that transitions like this are a process and that my feelings are not unusual. Whether I go in a year or in two and a half years—the unpacking of feelings and fears will be part of the self work that comes with the flow from one part of a life to another.

In the meantime, life goes on and it’s simply nice to have a day off work to recover and rest after a remarkable weekend of people and ideas.