Tag: aging

I retired in 2014.  I was only 55 years old, which is young to be retired.  I somehow never connected the idea of retirement, which just sounded like a long-term “staycation,” with the idea of aging.  I know that seems irrational, but I did not feel old or dilapidated or on the downhill path of life.  Physically, I did not feel any worse than I did when while I was working.  In fact, my health improved once I left the ranks of the employed.  Mentally, I had lots of activities to keep my mind spinning around in my skull.  Some would argue I had too many activities spinning around in my skull.  At any rate, I did not feel that my brain power was becoming slower and creakier.  Emotionally, I did feel some separation anxiety over leaving my friends and the life I knew in California.  When my mother’s stroke decimated my world, I suffered more emotionally than I ever had in my life, but that suffering had nothing to do with retirement.  In fact, if I were not retired when the situation occurred, it would have been much more difficult. 

So, retirement never felt like a reflection of my aging process.  I left my job and, for the most part, I was at least as healthy, intelligent, and happy as I was while working.  I congratulated myself that I did not let my career define me.  I celebrated my ability to live vibrantly and richly even without a job.  I looked at other people in my life who retired and immediately seemed to turn from “movers and shakers” to “sitters and steadiers.”  I just did not get it.  I felt a little smug that I escaped that fate.

That is, I felt a little smug until recently. It occurs to me that some time ago- maybe as long as two years ago- I seemed to enter a new phase of retirement.  I did not want to acknowledge it, but I think it is time to draw back the curtain.

I now understand those people who seem to equate retirement with age.  I am definitely in retirement 2.0 now. I see clearly that I am old.  I seem to always be somewhere on the exhaustion spectrum.  There is something in my body that flirts between discomfort and pain just about every day.  I was never the most agile creatures, but I see that now I cannot even do the same things I used to be able to do- things as simple as sitting on the floor and getting up under my own power.  Close friends, who I think of as my contemporaries, are facing serious health challenges that will likely never get better.  Some members of my circle are dying.  There is no doubt that my brain is moving more slowly and cannot efficiently process multiple ideas at the same time.  It is not that I feel like I am leaking cognitive ability like a sprinkler leaks water, but I do notice a sort of slogging tendency in my thinking.  It is like thoughts do not flow smoothly, but get caught and hung up on clogged, corroded, and pitted places in my brain.   

None of these phenomena is very pleasant, but I am also struggling with a piece of retirement and aging that is even more scary.  I am stumbling over my place in the world, grasping to create connection.  When one has a job, especially in a leadership position, there are many connections built into your day.  Forming those connections is organic.  I did not have to try to find connections; they came to me.  Too many of them came to me if truth be told.  Managing those connections could be exhausting, but the lack of them can be soul-killing.  For many retirees, even ones like me who are not exactly alone in the world, the absence of built-in connections can be even more debilitating than physical decline. 

I have worked hard since my mother’s death to find ways of building connections.  I am about as extreme an introvert as they come, but I still knew I would crumble without a small, tightly bound group of people with whom to live my new retired life.  It took a lot of energy to find ways to do this when I was not being randomly exposed to people all day every day. It is not just finding anyone with whom to connect; it is finding the right people with whom to connect and figuring out the right balance of giving and receiving.  I think I am a pretty awesome friend, actually.  I have a lot of love to give and am generous with it.  I do not want to be more trouble than I am worth, though. I know I can be a little needy and insecure.  On the other side of that self-knowledge, I also know that it feels good to give and it is selfish not to let loved ones give to me in the same way I enjoy giving to them. 

My efforts at connection have born fruit.  I know I do have a group of soul-level friends in my community, in my church, and from my past.  I am absolutely secure in that knowledge on an intellectual basis.  I still struggle daily, though, to feel it all the time.  I often feel isolated, alone, and unworthy.

I struggled the most with this feeling during the pandemic.  I took the initiative in finding strategies to advance connection and communication.  It was arduous work partly because I had to create opportunities to connect rather than just react to my everyday interactions. At times, I felt like I was trying too hard to solve a problem that didn’t exist.  I thought I was taking up this “connection flame” for other people. I worried about people who were truly isolated. I wanted to show them that someone cared.  I came to understand that my actions were not just for other people.  They were just as much for me. 

Aging is not easy and sometimes the burden of it knocks me to the floor.  On the other hand, I have learned many new skills during the aging process.  I have learned to be more accepting of myself and others.  I have learned much more about being happy.

I now understand retired people who always are tired, confused, not in good health, or lonely.  I am experiencing those feelings.  My age is catching up with me.  However, I do not intend to go gentle into that good night of aging.  I think the secret is to acknowledge that I am aging and accommodate it to the extent it serves me to do so, but not surrender to it.  When I am tired, I may decide to push through that tiredness to enjoy something I want to do and cut out something that does not sound as fun.  When I have a sore ankle or aching back, I may decide to spend a little longer in a hot shower and go a little easy on the housework so I can merrily traipse around Disney World.  When my brain is moving a little more laboriously than it used to, I may slow down and take on fewer responsibilities so I can succeed without as much multi-tasking. 

Aging is something that is happening to me, but it does not have to define who I am. 

How do you deal with the aging process?  What strategies have you found to increase your satisfaction with life without a job?  Please share your perspective by leaving a comment.  In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com. 

Have a lively day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

A couple of months ago, I posted a blog called Growing Old Together In The Old South (Growing Old Together In The Old South – Terri LaBonte- Reinventing Myself in Retirement). In that post, I discussed Max and me celebrating our 25th anniversary in Savannah.  That was a fun time.  Today, I want to address a more sinister topic…. Just plain growing old.

We all understand that aging is a natural process and, unless we die young, old age will have an impact on our bodies.  I think I got complacent, though.  For years, even though the number in my age increased, I did not feel any different.  Aside from a momentary panic upon reaching each milestone birthday, I truly did not feel any older each September 30 when I blew out the candles on my cake. 

I think I am being realistic when I say I think I went about 15 or 20 years with no significant aging.  Even when I look at home movies and pictures from days gone by, I think I looked pretty much the same from age 35 to age 55.  Certainly, there were differences if one looked closely.  Still, I think I always looked to be in my late thirties. 

Then, sometime around my 60th birthday, nature seemed to catch up with me.  It is as if all that aging that should have happened in the first 15 years of the new millennium happened in a matter of two years.  My skin is dull.  My face has wrinkles, which might be a good thing.  Without the wrinkles keeping some of my features in place, my cheeks and jowls might be sagging down to my waist. There is certainly extensive sagging around my previously taut jawline.   My back and legs tend to protest more vociferously when overexerted… or, maybe more accurately, exerted at all.  My knees, always a weak point, seem to have locked up tighter than a maximum-security prison cell.  Picking up items from the floor is suddenly much more difficult.  I am surprised it is not an Olympic sport.

It is not that there is anything really wrong with my health.  Certainly, no new illness has cropped up in the past couple of years.  I am a pretty healthy person.  If anything, I am healthier now than I was prior to my descent into agedness.  My diet is better than it used to be.  I exercise every day.  My lab results are excellent.  I am fortunate that the only malady that seems to plague me is this mutated version of the normal aging process.  I am not complaining.  It is just that the suddenness and fierceness of my elderliness is alarming.  At this rate, my body will be eighty-five before I am chronologically sixty-five. 

Do you think it might have something to do with senior discounts?  I did qualify for some discounts when I reached 55, but many did not kick in until age 60.  Does every 10% off come with a corresponding hit to my physical being? Or perhaps it is the decades of hair dye.  Maybe dying my hair is like donning a pair of Spanx.  When I put on Spanx, the fat does not, unfortunately, disappear.  The Spanx just shoves it to another location.  Maybe coloring my hair does not make me more youthful.  Maybe the hair dye just shoves the aging to a different position. The dye covers my gray hair but causes other parts of me to age more.   I will have to think about that one.  I think I would rather have gray hair than joints that do not cooperate with my inclinations. 

My brother and my cousin, bless them, tell me that I look as young as I did in junior high.  My brother and my cousin are clearly liars.  On the other hand, maybe their assertions bear some consideration.  Let us ask ourselves a question.  Do any of us really want to look like we did in junior high?  I certainly do not.

Maybe aging is not that bad.

Have you aged suddenly or has the process been more of a slow burn for you? What do you to keep healthy and functional as aging starts to catch up with you? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you may email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a youthful day!

Terri/Dorry 🙂