It’s been five years since I retired from NASA and the TLDR; is: I have never looked back, something I hinted about in my first post about this. In fact at this point I can barely remember working at NASA, except for having lunch with Steve and Brad. As Lisa says: Alex is the busiest, happiest retired guy I know1. Of course, not everyone has this easy a time and there is a lot of nuance to retirement; if you are interested in my take, keep reading.
What I have come to realize is that everyone’s journey is different but there is a theme that runs through all paths. I don’t remember exactly where I got the concept from – I think it may have been Barbara Bradley Hagarty’s book Life Reimagined The Science, Art, and Opportunity of Midlife that Lisa and I read – but my take on that is there are three main criteria you must satisfy in retirement to live a happy and meaningful life. These are:
- You have to find something to do that gets you out of bed every day
- You have to find something to do that makes you feel like a productive human being
- You have to have a good social network
Not explicitly stated in this piece is the financial side of retirement, and you can watch a gazillion You Tube videos to get advice on that2 if you have not already been working on this with a financial planner. By no means is having a lot of money required to live happy and meaningful life, rather it just may put constraints on the choices. That said, let me expand on each of these a bit.
The first is pretty obvious. In our working years we had to get up and go to work, sometimes(?) real drudgery especially commuting into DC from Annapolis! But in retirement you can sleep in and do nothing, but that gets old fast, really fast. You need things to occupy your time in a way that brings you joy. That might mean sleeping later every day if you struggled for 30 years getting up a 5am to beat the traffic. It might mean playing a lot of golf, doing a lot of regattas, going on bike rides every day, traveling; all the things you never really had time to do to the extent you wanted while you were working. You might do something completely different, art, music, woodworking, urban planning, the choices are limitless3. For me, that is cycling, sailing, writing, building/fixing things, technology and a bunch of other rabbit holes I often go down. So many I have to sometimes put my fingers in my ears and scream lalalalala. Ultimately these are almost always Type 1 Fun.
The second is a nuance of the first. While you can do all of the selfish things you want that bring YOU joy. eventually that starts to feel a little meaningless. As I aways say you can only play so much golf (or ride so many bikes, or sail so many boats). It ends up feeling bougie and sort of loses its luster, that is unless you are a complete selfish a-hole, and frankly that’s ok too if it brings you joy, it’s your path. But for the rest of us, we need to fill a good chunk of our time with activities that benefit others. That’s what I mean by feeling like a productive human being. In most of our working lives, we’ve enjoyed careers that (at least we rationalized in our minds) do some good in the world. This is an inherent human trait (for non sociopaths anyway) that makes life fulfilling. So ideally you’d mix the activities in the first criteria with things that are enjoyable, but help others. This often manifests itself as volunteer work in non-profit, civic, religious, sports or any number organizations4. It can also be solo activities that are as simple as regularly picking up trash around your neighborhood. For me, these are mostly civic activities that have a lot of commonality with my hobbies above and are being a founding member of Strong Towns, a member (and current Chair) of the Annapolis Planning Commission, BikeAAA, and President of the USA Snipe Class. The day to day work in these organization is not always fun to do (but is mostly) but is in the end really satisfying, a twist on Type 2 Fun.
The third criteria I believe is often overlooked and frankly I had not given it much thought, but is critical as human interaction is almost as important as food and shelter even for introverts (and this extroverted introvert). If your social network is in any way tied to your employment that you are retiring from, you have to have a retirement substitute in place before retiring because it will go away much faster that you could ever imagine. I was shocked at how fast my NASA connections disappeared. I mean virtually instantly, with the exception of Steve and Brad because we’ve been personal friends for a long time. But the interaction with my work colleagues, people I considered friends, disappeared instantly despite some attempt to keep it going. I guess that is just the way things go, people are busy, have their own lives and social circles etc, I was just taken aback at how fast it was. For me, the personal contacts in my activities under the first two criteria as well as neighborhood friends, satisfy this need. I even have more bandwith these days to break out of my social comfort zone5.
When I think of why I have never looked back and have no regrets, what I come to is these three criteria are all satisfied for me with the things I have always liked to do, so the transition was very smooth. I have always had more interests than time and now I have the time to do all of those things that bring me joy and fulfillment that don’t produce income. That’s what retirement enables. This is my journey that was more or less a right turn from my NASA career and it has suited me well. If those three criteria are satisfied for you by doing the same think you’ve done for 30 or 40 years, then by all means keep doing it6, don’t retire7! Maybe you want to split the difference by going part time or getting a consulting job in the same industry that lets you ease into figuring out how to satisfy these criteria (this is Lisa’s current path), that’s another path.
Some of the retirement stories I hear about have not gone smoothly, and this is the subject of many videos such as this TEDx talk. This often happens when someone is forced to retire against their will, makes a rash decision they regret, of thinks it’s time but has not really thought about “whaat’s next”. In those cases, videos like this really help figure out the path. But ultimately, a successful end state is what I’ve described above and is the take–home message of videos like this. They are different takes on how to get to the same place.
Footnotes
- Funny personal stories, in the first few months during which that piece was written and Lisa was still working, we would be in the home office in the morning and I would look over at her and ask “does it bother you that I’m so fucking happy?” Since she worked during my first four years of retirement, I always said “she had to keep working to keep me in the life to which I have become accustomed”, a joke that got old really fast and usual solicited a punch, ↩︎
- My current favorites at the moment are Holy Schmidt and Erin Talks Money. ↩︎
- I am sure you can google this if you need more ideas! ↩︎
- Another idea that comes to mind that doesn’t take to much time and actually pays money is being an Election Judge. ↩︎
- Unlike a former introverted neighborhood friend who said, when suggested by a common friend we might hit it off “I don’t need any more fucking friends” ↩︎
- This was my Dad’s path, he was working as a clerk for a Massachusetts appellate court judge until age 86! ↩︎
- Obviously if you are forced to retire, it’s a different story. ↩︎