I had a long conversation with a friend today; she is going through that strange transition, retirement. She’s worrying about what she’s going to do, and what her priorities are, and she’s feeling a little raw and sensitive about the people in her life, now that she has the time to pay attention to them and doesn’t have to worry about her coworkers any more.

Boy, do I get it. I’ve been “retired” for ten years now; though I worked part time for some of those ten years, I cut out even that after a little bit.

There are times I still am not completely at ease with not working for a living.

We are asked as a child what we want to be when we grow up, and people keep asking us that throughout school and well into college and beyond, as if we are larvae anticipating metamorphosis into our adult forms.

No one asks us what we’re going to be when we retire. They ask us what we’re going to do, and the difference may seem slight. It’s a hell of a transition, though.

When I was working, I kept worrying about my future and how I was going to save enough money to retire. I was conscientious. I saved. I was thrifty. I was always afraid I would not have enough money, and sometimes I really didn’t have enough money.

Now all I can do is spend. That feels peculiar. I’m still not used to it.

The other transition has to do with the space my job took in my life. When I was working, my job mattered. My performance was judged. Dealing with my colleagues mattered. There was drama, and exhaustion. There were times when I didn’t know if I was going to survive. I kept trying to juggle a life, including work that took most of my waking hours if I was doing it right. I was always grateful that I finally figured out what I wanted to be, but damn it was hard.

And then I retired, and I didn’t have to be anything.

I’m my own supervisor now, and a pretty easy-going one; the work I do is basically keeping myself healthy and interested in life. I’ve done a lot of things in retirement, but all of it was (pretty much) self-driven, and I didn’t get paid for it.

This morning, before meeting up with friends, I sat at a café table opposite Eastern State Penitentiary (now a museum) with my latté and wrote in my journal:

It isn’t necessary to justify my existence. There is no special work to be done which will support my right to be here. I am not important. This is just fine.

Maybe I’ll believe that some time soon. Perhaps.