Facebook Sent Me a Christmas-Day Reminder That It’s 6 Years Since My Retirement: What Have I Learned
Hunkered down against the frigid Northeast cold on this cozy Christmas Day at home, I hear my laptop ping and find a message from Facebook accompanying the photo above. “Martin, we care about you and the memories you share here,” the message says. “We thought you’d like to look back on this post from 6 years ago.”
And so I do. And the thoughts come in a torrent. I recall the morning I came in to work and marked the number 365 on the top of the page of my Covey Planner exactly one year from my retirement date. And I counted down every day after that until my 35-year career at the pharma giant Roche had come to the finish line. Twenty years at the company’s U.S. headquarters outside of New York, and roughly 15 at global headquarters in Basel, Switzerland.
Before Roche, the biggest influence in my life by far was Woodstock. After Roche it was, well, Roche. With my hippie sensibilities and decade in my early 20s spent singing in folk clubs and freelancing feature stories, I could never picture myself putting on a suit and working for a major corporation — couldn’t picture it even after I was living it; it always seemed like a cosmic accident.
Meant to Be One thing I’ve learned in the six years since retiring is that it was no accident at all. Anything but. I am still in close contact with the three people responsible for hiring me: my boss, my boss’s boss, and my boss’s boss’s boss, all dear friends to this day.
I am still in close contact with my international Dream Team from Basel: a sweet young Swiss woman who grew exponentially in the job; a stylish and perpetually tanned German woman; a maverick, multilingual Frenchman; and a congenitally libertarian Englishman. We traveled the world together and made an indelible mark in each other’s lives, inspiring a few of our international colleagues along the way.
I’ve learned that my job was right for me because I loved the work — coming up with ways to communicate difficult and complex issues and make them understandable and worthy of support. I loved it so much I continue to do it six years after leaving, and coaching graduate students to do it back in New York. One of them, by the way, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the middle of last semester, fell into fatigue and despair, and recovered after starting therapy with a drug made by… my former company. I’ll be attending her graduation soon.
I’ve learned there are people who feel comfortable living in the country, some who thrive in the suburbs, and others who can barely breathe unless they wake up with a throbbing city around them. I’m one of the latter.
Phases within Phases Most importantly, I’ve learned that there may be as many phases to retirement as there are to any major stage of life; that there is no one formula to a happy and successful retirement; and that the ingredients and routines of retirement can shift and evolve for… who knows how long? I’m still experiencing it.
Some people I know took to retirement instantly, like ducks to water. Others have told me they tried to break the dramatic fall from strict daily routine to complete lack of structure by creating a “soft landing” for themselves. For example, selling a business they built but continuing on to work with the new owners for a few years.
In my case, I tried to blunt the blow of retirement by trying my hand at building a second career as a communications consultant. But I didn’t think it through clearly enough to know what types of clients I wanted, how much I wanted to earn and how much I wanted to work. I figured I’d play it by ear.
I wound up feeling that I had to take on some assignments that didn’t thrill me to pay my dues like when I started out. Then I attended a conference where one of the speakers said something that became engrained in my head. “If you’re offered a project and your immediate reaction isn’t ‘Hell YES!’” she said, “then your answer should be ‘Hell NO!’” I also realized I didn’t want to work as many hours or as hard as my early post-retirement ambitions required.
“Wanting to feel wanted and needed in retirement is the №1 issue for men,” my shrink told me. (Boy am I glad I have him, and would recommend someone like him to help everyone through the adjustment of retirement.)
Some people, like my friend’s father, a distinguished doctor, wanted to practice medicine his whole life, and pursued it vigorously until he died of covid well into his 80s. My wife, a former attorney who now works as a Mandarin court interpreter, wants to work until she can’t any longer.
Can’t Get No Satisfaction in Retirement And look at 79-year-old Mick Jagger, who just this past spring kicked off The Stones’ Sixty Tour, scheduled for 14 shows in 10 European countries. What’s more, Mick says he’s got more tours in his tank, and will continue to plan and do them as long as he continues to enjoy it.
And me, after six years I think I’ve finally gotten it right. Or right for right now. I do a little paid consulting, to make myself feel like I’m pulling my weight in my partnership with my wife. I do a little mentoring of graduate students to make myself feel like I’m giving back from my years of professional experience. I do a little writing, because that’s something I’ve always done and loved for as long as I can remember.
And, if my 2023 New Year’s resolution holds up, I’ll return to my guitar and learn to play a few chords to accompany myself on that cool keyboard I bought myself for my birthday a few years ago. That’s another thing I’ve learned: I always seem to need something to beat myself up for not getting to. Some things never change.