Retirement? · 27 July 2024
People keep asking me when I plan on retiring. I keep wondering if they are trying to get rid of me. And I keep telling them that the Lord will let me know.
This next school year will be my thirtieth year teaching. At the same school. Teaching the same subjects (for the most part). Almost exclusively in the same room. It has been a wonderful time. The kids have mostly been great. The colleagues have been amazing. And I have enjoyed almost every minute of it. But after thirty years, I know the end is coming. I just do not know when. Next year? The year after? The year after that? I just do not know. I am happy and healthy, and I still like going to work each day. So who knows?
There is only one other thing that I would like to do more than teaching. That is writing. For a living. If I could spend a few hours each day writing and make enough money to support my family, I would consider retiring. Which means that if you want me to retire, go out and buy a bunch of my books and tell others to do so also. (But do not boycott my books if you want to keep me in the classroom. I still need to retire some day.)
I am actually not sure what retirement looks like. People talk about doing the things they want to do. They talk about leisure activities. They talk about trips. They even talk about writing. But somehow, they do not seem to do all those things they talked about. Or maybe that is just my perception. Maybe they really do golf or fish or exercise each day. Maybe they learn new things. Maybe they take up that new hobby they never had time to do before.
But that is the kicker. If people do not make time now to take up that hobby they say they want to do, why do they think they will do so after retirement? Why do we think that we will really have more time after we retire than we do now? Why do we think that our time is completely constrained by our jobs (and recovering from our jobs)?
I think we all take time to do the things we want to do. Whether we are retired or not. Oh sure. We have budget constraints and time constraints. But we will always have those. Okay. Some people do not really have much budget constraints, but the vast majority of us do. And so we will need to choose what we can do with our time and money. But we have always had to do that. Retired or not.
So we ought to take the time to do the things we always thought we wanted to do. We ought to learn how to tie flies. We ought to write that book. We ought to learn that language. We ought to lower our golf handicap by practicing and playing. We ought to… Well, you get the picture.
I must say that I agree with our former pastor. Christ followers need to think of retirement as a new way to serve God and people. We should be doing that now, and we should keep doing so even in retirement.
I do not know when I will retire, but I do know that I will keep doing at least one thing I love besides teaching. I will continue to write whether anybody reads. I will continue to write whether I am retired or not. I will continue to write, whether I ever get to mediocre or not.
© 2024 Michael T. Miyoshi
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