Sandy Bexon is the Advocate’s newest columnist. She has served as Communications Officer for Chinook’s Edge School Division for the past 15 years and worked in Communications at Olds College. She recently launched a new novel called Moving Mountains, and her short stories have appeared in Chicken Soup for the Soul and other publications.
She recently looked up from the busyness of a long career to discover she has a lot to learn about the world around her! She quickly became aware that the topic of retirement is not a common one to write about – or more precisely, the topic of re-learning the routines and priorities of daily existence.
I signed up for a First Aid course the month before I retired, which seems much more work-related than leisure-related. Trouble letting go, I guess. Of structure, of routine, the connections with peers, the certainty of a paycheque. I’ve been told I have commitment issues, but struggling to commit to something as wonderful as retirement? The Golden Years? My big payback time of life? I should be embracing this.
I had been mentally preparing for over a year, having met regularly with my retirement specialist at the bank and even dropping hints to my boss so he wouldn’t be caught completely by surprise.
I even provided little daily reminders to myself by changing my passwords to retirement-related words, though that approach just led to confusion. I had worked ‘snowbird’ into one of my passwords early on, but couldn’t login to my computer because I kept typing snowboard. Then I changed it to ‘farewell’, but was attempting to login with welfare. They tell you not to write your passwords down, but a person really should if you’re trying to be newly clever.
Then one day it seemed retirement came to me. As we’re hearing so much in the wake of the pandemic, it seemed the right time to embrace the change that I’ve been craving – and saving for throughout these past decades.
In fact, I was suddenly so excited by the mere thought that by the time I announced it to my boss it came out something like, “I think I’m just going to leave today.” After further discussion, we landed on a retirement date six months away. With all that settled, it was time to make the official announcement.
People seem to say really strange things at big times in life. Everyone asked my age, as though I needed to qualify for this somehow. When I said 61, several people tisk tisked as though I was pretty darn cheeky to be vanquishing all my responsibilities before 65. I felt obligated to explain, even to people I rarely spoke to before then, that I would be continuing to work but just not in the full-time big stress grind that I had been in for nearly 35 years.
But the age debate stuck for quite some time, with people bandying about ideas that I would surely miss the pace, that I couldn’t possibly have saved enough after raising my daughter as a single mother, or that perhaps I would feel more comfortable retiring at an even number. Sixty-one was an odd age for retirement, they said, even something that was a derivative of five would be better.
Then there were the many, many people who mentioned someone they knew who died shortly after retiring. Worked hard all their lifetime and dropped at the first taste of freedom, the lesson clearly being that it is much safer to just remain working.
That, I figured, was perhaps why I had taken the First Aid course. I would know the first signs of medical distress if retirement was going to backfire on me.
Sandy Bexon lives in Red Deer and is stepping into retirement after over 35 years as a communications professional, reporter and writer. Her column appears in the Advocate every Tuesday.