I have been retired from my position at Hiram College for six months. Turning 65, doing my regular job plus substituting as the cataloger, and the decreasing presence of the library as I know it in the life of the college convinced me that it was time to say my goodbyes. I left, but didn’t quite, as I still had one leftover advisee, who finished up in May, and now I have volunteered to be on the Board of the Friends of the Library. Perhaps I’m a damned fool for agreeing to it. However, as a non-employee of the institution I may be able to allow my inner rebel to flourish.
Retirement is an odd thing, especially if you don’t quite give up the lifestyle. I’m still, for want of a better word, an academic. I think about colleges and their future a lot, wonder if I would survive in one as a student (things have changed radically since the early 1970s), and consider the impact the library had on my early life as opposed to that of a contemporary student. I still think about doing research. I still write book reviews. I ain’t done yet, although the paperwork says something quite different. So far, I have read more than 50 books since the beginning of the year, a pace that I haven’t maintained since the summer before I started working as a high school student. But reading 50 books means sitting for 50 books, and I need to strike a better balance in my newly available free time, between reading getting some exercise.
And writing. I’ve been doing some “creative” writing of the memoir variety. I’m not sure where it’s going yet, but I plan to do a public reading of a couple of essays in the fall. They’re based on some old photos I have of me as a kid, using the images as jumping off points for segments of my life as I reconstruct them in memory and spill them on the page. This is very different writing from anything I’ve ever done before, and it might just end in dismal failure. For my entire career I have written technical reports, academic papers, policies and procedures, reviews, and other materials that require stilted and formal prose. Now, I can do anything, but what does that mean? Will I write essays about my life that sound like technical reports? Results have yet to come in.
Aside from the lack of going to work in the morning and sitting in front of a computer for seven hours each day, I noticed a few immediate changes in my world. More dishes, less laundry, for example. Since I’m eating lunch at home more of the time, there’s more to clean up. But I don’t have to use quite as much clothing if I’m just kicking around the house. Normally, I changed clothes after work, slipping into something more comfortable for the evening. Now I start with the more comfortable clothes and stay there, changing to something presentable if we go out. My sleep schedule hasn’t quite changed to match my wife’s, but I’m getting up an hour later in the morning. I sometimes take an afternoon nap. My goodness, what decadence.
Now, all my mail comes to the house. I used to have packages come to the library, so that I could recycle the cardboard without adding to the pile at home to take to the recycle bins in town, or reuse the boxes if they were big, for book sale storage. I have also cut down on the number of packages, which is to say the number of CDs and books I buy. Not completely, but significantly. Our town doesn’t have drone delivery yet, but UPS delivers on Sundays, and that’s quite sufficient.
I continue to resist some technologies. We remodeled our kitchen and it has neither microwave nor dishwasher. We don’t like them. I do not have a smartphone, but I suppose that will change eventually, as vital functions will not happen without them. Hell, I don’t even answer the phone at home if I can avoid it. It’s never for me anyway, except the robocalls from our friendly politicians. Screw them all, the rat bastards. Do I sound retired yet?
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