Photo by Co-women on Unsplash
Retirement has traditionally been seen as the holy grail for hard pushed, lifelong workers. How wonderful we think, to pack it all in at 60 – or even 50 - and never again have to endure the early mornings, the tiresome commuting and being at someone else’s beck and call, day in, day out. There is so much we could do with that extra time: instead of rushing around at a hundred miles an hour, trying to cram in running a home, family commitments, health appointments and having a social life around the daily grind, we will then have all the time in the world and be able to pick and choose what we do when.
We want, too, to be free of the stress that comes with most employment. In the workplace we are always under pressure to work faster, harder, achieve more, and this pressure becomes so ingrained we don’t even notice it until we stop, at the weekend or for a holiday. As we calm down and the adrenaline and cortisol start to leave our system to be replaced with feel good serotonin and endorphins, we realise that this is what it might be like when we retire. No pressure, nothing to worry about.
There are, however, many upsides of working hard. For many of us, this is where we meet challenges, have successes and feel self-worth. This is where we have our community, make friends, feel a part of something. Our career, in many ways defines us and becomes, for better or worse, our identity. Working gives us is a rhythm to our lives, a routine that provides structure. If we work hard all week, when the weekend or holidays come around, we feel we’ve earned them, they are a treat and they provide a pleasing contrast to the everyday.
I’ve always loved being part of that collective Friday feeling, when the mood is elevated, the pubs are noisy and most of us are looking forward to our time off on the weekend ahead. As a result, I’ve never wanted all my days to be the same, where Wednesday feels just like Saturday feels just like Thursday.
So, I never imagined I’d stop working. I had no desire to. But, almost three years ago, that is exactly what I did. I left my role as Editor in Chief of UK Country Living in October 2019. It was a post I had held for 24 years and I had loved (almost) every minute of it. Yes, I worked hard. Yes, it was stressful a lot of the time, but it was also immensely creative, great fun and very rewarding. Working in magazines was all I had ever wanted to do and landing what I considered to be my dream job, felt like the absolute pinnacle of my career. I worked with a great bunch of people and our strong team spirit allowed us to produce a beautiful and extremely successful magazine whilst also having a lot of fun. I’ve written before about working in magazine publishing: I called it “Choose a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” (see it in my Home Truths archive on Substack) and it really felt that way for me. I would never have wanted to do anything else.
But the business changed, as much of business – and indeed life - did, when the internet came along. I can still remember the moment when, in 2006 I began to realise just what havoc the world wide web, amazing invention though it is, was about to reap on the world and more specifically my world, for ever. For many magazines, the combined loss of advertising revenue and consumer purchase (why pay when you can get everything free online?) meant that budgets were slashed, staff ratios halved and quality compromised. Few magazines got through unscathed. Even those, like Country Living who managed to retain – and still do – a sizable, loyal and dedicated readership, had to make compromises.
My role, as a senior member of staff became more about the money and less about creativity. How were we to make up for the lost revenue from other sources? This, in itself, was interesting and a new challenge and we came up with some great ideas, but ultimately my job metamorphosed into something else and I no longer gained the fulfilment from it I had once enjoyed. It felt like the right time to leave. Not retire, you understand, just leave, and do something else.
That’s when I realised, I had a problem. My husband had seen this coming a mile off. He often used to ask me, when I told him how much I loved my job, “Yes, but what’s your Plan B?” I’d answer “I don’t have one. I’ll worry about that when the time comes”. The fact was, that even when I thought about it, I couldn’t come up with a plan B. Being so certain of wanting to work in magazines was great – and I’d done that, but I honestly couldn’t think of anything else I aspired to.
At one time it would have been something horticultural. I have been a keen gardener for many years and used to think how wonderful it would be to have my own plant nursery, run courses or design gardens for a living, so much so, that I gained the Royal Horticultural Society Certificate in Horticulture and in 1994 took a break from my career in magazines to train in garden design at Merrist Wood college in Surrey. But I discovered that, much as I enjoy gardening, I didn’t want to go into it as a profession.
Often, we enjoy a hobby because it is a break from the everyday and sits in stark contrast with what we do for a living. If we decide to turn our hobby into a business - and it has to be said that many do this very successfully - it is, obviously, no longer just a hobby. It, instead, becomes the everyday, with all the stress and pressures that accompany any job.
So, when I left Country Living, I found myself at home with little idea of what I was going to be doing. At first it was a novelty. I had all the freedom that one craves when working fulltime. I pottered in the garden, arranged to see friends and had a bit of a clear-out at home. Then the pandemic hit and we were all suddenly in lockdown. Now everyone was in the same boat as me, confined to quarters and not seeing others.
My old team at Country Living were dispersed all over the country and having to communicate in online meetings rather than seeing one another face to face. My immediate thought was “Thank heavens I left when I did”. The extra stress involved in trying to produce a magazine with no-one actually in the same place must have been horrendous. Some of the best and most successful projects we ever worked on at Country Living came from having a group of people in a room brainstorming together and turning the kernel of an idea into a fully-fledged project or campaign that in some cases really made a difference in changing the world. I just don’t see how you can achieve this level of group creative working when you hardly ever see one another.
Aside from this, being part of a community at work is important simply for human contact and interaction. It’s where we learn, how we grow and the way we build friendships and contacts that often last a lifetime. It is vital for those starting out in industry to be able to turn to someone at the next desk and ask “How do I do this?” or to get chatting to colleagues at the water cooler and expand the network that may further their career. I think it’s immensely sad that many companies and indeed their employees have decided, post pandemic, that they’ll continue this new way of working without carefully weighing up the negative effect this will have on our levels of creativity, productivity and long-term mental health.
With this massive workplace change, I was certainly glad I had chosen to step away. But what was I going to do with all this time on my hands? I had been used to running my home and all that entails, bringing up my teenage daughters as a single mum, keeping my garden to a reasonable standard and fitting in a social life around working long hours in London at my job. Now, suddenly, once I had walked the dog, emptied the dishwasher and hung out some washing, I couldn’t think of what else to do with myself. I found I didn’t have any sense of purpose or reason to get up in the morning. I’d gone from speeding along at a hundred miles an hour to not even getting off the starting blocks. I love my home but I’m getting sick of looking at the same four walls.
I learned that I don’t want to garden every day – that doesn’t feel like a treat anymore. I took up golf, seeing that as a new challenge and the provider of a new social life, but hip and back problems are preventing me from really progressing that. I keep thinking I should volunteer for a charity of some sort. I now understand why elderly people spend so long chatting to the cashiers in Sainsburys – it’s possibly the only person they see all day. I am lucky, my husband is around, my daughters live nearby and I have quite a few friends in the neighbourhood, but I still find myself popping across the road for a pint of milk and chatting away to the ever-friendly Claire, just to get out of the house. But ultimately, it’s not only about that: I want to use my skills and experience, I’d like to earn a bit of money, but most importantly, I need to stop my brain from going to mush.
When I was leaving Country Living the new editor asked me to write a monthly column for the magazine. I initially said no. I felt I needed a clean break. She asked again, and those closest to me suggested it might be a good idea to have something specific and regular to put my mind to do, so I agreed. I am very glad I did so. It kept my connection with the magazine and gave me a creative task, albeit only once a month.
I also signed up with Substack and began to produce this regular newsletter, writing on subjects that aren’t quite right for Country Living. All good. But neither of these allow me to be with people. I am still sitting at home, working alone and looking at the same surroundings every day. I realised I was becoming quite depressed and still mourning the loss of my career. This milestone in our lives is often considered a bereavement and requires a major adjustment in our mindset, sometimes eased through with counselling.
Then, a month or two ago I was approached about a role that seemed perfect for me. It would make use of my experience and give me the creative outlet I craved. Importantly, it would take me into an office to work alongside a bunch of like-minded people. The downside was, the offices are based a long way away from my home and I would have a two-hour drive there and back three days a week, either setting out at the crack of dawn or, to avoid the daily commuting, staying overnight. It was also heading up a team again and thus carrying the can when things didn’t quite go to plan. I realised several important points: I no longer want that level of responsibility, I don’t want to work more than two days a week and I really don’t want the added stress of long-distance travel. I turned it down.
Back to square one. Then, just recently, a chance conversation with a friend revealed that she needed some help at work. She and her business partner run a location agency, sourcing desirable properties for busy media producers to use in photo shoots, TV, movies, commercials and events. My experience, she felt, could come in handy. “I don’t want to work at home” I told her quite emphatically, “the whole point of this is that I want to go into an office, be with people and work as part of a team again.” “That is exactly what we want”, she explained. They have interviewed people recently for roles and found that they all want to work from home. Like me, she and her business partner don’t see this as a good way of working.
As a team of four women, they operate very flexibly to allow for work/life balance but they want to be together, most days, in the same place. Their offices, in a lovely old converted industrial building, are local to me: I can hop on a bus and be there in 20 minutes. I went in for a day last week and loved it. The very fact of getting up and deciding what to wear for work, doing the short commute, buying a coffee on the way instead of making one at home, and then, when I got there, being part of the banter that goes around the room alongside the concentrated working, was fun and fulfilling. I feel useful and a little stretched which is good for me. I’m connecting with interesting people and feeling a part of something.
It's early days. We all want to see how it goes. They tell me they have a spare desk and computer until September so I will see how useful I can be to them, and they will see how they feel I fit in. If there’s enough for me to do and we all feel happy with the arrangement, it may become a permanent thing. In the meantime, I’m beginning to feel happy with describing myself as “semi-retired”. This implies that I am still doing something interesting, am of use to the world and have not, thankfully been “put out to pasture.”
How do you feel about the idea of retirement? Do you/did you have a Plan B? Id love to know. Leave a comment below and I’ll respond
A fascinating read. I have subscribed to Country Living since day one, love the morning it pops through the letterbox, and pass it on to grateful friends. A year after my husband died I was made redundant, along with the w hole department in the college where I taught. Most of my colleagues were in their thirties and forties. I was 72 and not considering retirement. I was unsure what to do but decided to focus on my physical and mental health, something I had neglected when I was so busy. I signed up for classes at my local adult college. And I joined a sports and social club. I also subscribed to Kew Gardens and several art galleries. I also spent time with children and grandchildren. My week is now busy, I especially love aqua aerobics 4 x times a week and have made a great circle of friends. So far I have enjoyed six years of retirement and as I approach 80 my life is full and I am grateful.
Wow, what a brilliant read. I really appreciate the honesty. I’m in my mid-thirties, so retirement feels a way off yet, but so much in this resonated with me. I too considered swapping magazines for gardening. I haven’t fully resolved the question in my mind, though I have found that combining the two worlds - ie, writing about gardening - has gone some way towards taking the heat out of my mid-pandemic existential crisis. Because you’re right, our work is a huge part of our identity. To me, it’s hard to unpick “what do/should I do for a living?” from “who am I?” Also, I often fantasise about a sort of pseudo-retirement - you know, winning the lottery and downing tools. But a) I don’t buy lottery tickets, and b) I find that whenever I have extended periods without work (holidays notwithstanding), is when I get most depressed. When we’re busy, we dream of putting our feet up; when our diary is empty, we long for purpose. The grass is always greener, I guess…