Well, what IS new, after all?
I'm retired is what's new, mostly. After a long interval of looking, applying, interviewing and trying, I came to the conclusion that retired is the place to be.
Now, there is a back story that will make it a more rational choice. in 2020, when everything shut down, so did I. Depression, with catatonia; the big sleep, of sorts. I checked out, entirely. No motivation to anything. Not even getting up, eating or drinking. 6 months of sleep, essentially. The only problem; I was 2/3 of the way to starving to death. I wasn't quite a scarecrow, but back to sophomore in high school weight. Increasing alarm on the part of family brought me to help in the form of ECT treatments. 25 of those put me back in the land of the living, with some side effects. When I gathered enough sense to begin to think for myself, I remembered my LTD policies. I applied and was accepted for benefits. The short version is, I can't go back to being a general surgeon for multiple reasons, so I qualify as completely disabled. That means enough disability income to replace a teacher's salary, anyway. It pays our bills. And, we don't really need access to the retirement funds. So, I'm not compelled to seek other employment. I am left with time to figure out "what's next?". I'm working on that with an executive coach. Depression is a bitch, and it doesn't just magically go away. It can be manageable, which it is, for the most part. Motivation is the big issue and I am much more a thinker than a doer these days. Side effects did not resolve completely. I am left with a word finding issue and some blocks of memory loss. Mostly I get along without too much difficulty.
Living in the moment is a new skill, one that isn't learned instantly. I probably knew how once, about 50 years ago. I'm getting better at it, but I slip easily back into the state of free floating anxiety about the fact that I should be doing something gainful, only without an obvious objective. So, I practice assertive change in thought patterns, meditation and whatever way I can think of to get free of the urge to "go".
I have experienced COVID in a significant way, also impacting my pathway towards a new equalibrium. I've had the acute form twice, roughly a year apart. In each case, I contracted the virus at the end of a vaccination interval. After recovery, I then got my booster, twice. I experienced many months of trailing symptoms, putting me in the Long COVID category, experienced by perhaps 10% of all who have had the acute infection. First there was POTS (positional orthostatic tachycardic syndrome). The second round added nausea/vomiting to the other symptoms, so I decided to rule out life threatening coronary disease with a cardiology consult and nuclear cardiac scan. Recently, I began experiencing muscle soreness and cramping after modest exertion. Instead of recovering like one would expect, it persisted and worsened. I stopped the statin I was taking. Thus far, this hasn't changed my status. There's a syndrome called PEM (post exertional malaise) which behaves alot like ME/CFS (Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome), that has been associated with long COVID. This raises all kinds of suspicions, but there aren't routine diagnostic tests for these entities, so my approach is to excercise patience and see what transpires over time. This stuff threw me off my pathway towards equanimity, however, and I had to both receive and embrace the physical phenomena as well as the mental/emotional effects of having been "sidelined".
All this experience has reinforced the fact that I am in retirement from my former career as a clinician and surgeon. It doesn't mean I'm done with meaningful engagement in the public square, but it does mean that until the inspiration strikes and the opportunity presents itself, I am in a sabbatical mode, reading, studying, meditating, corresponding and working with the coach to help chart the path into the unknown.
I am no longer much of a saver, just a bit from my 0.05FTE position as medical director of the laser services business. I defer about 20% of my modest stipend, adding up to a few thousand dollars each year into a basket of mutual funds. The bulk of my life savings is distributed between IRAs that roughly follow my dividend growth objectives, but with some additional diversity recommended by the investment advisors. I could reclaim my role as independent manager of my retirement portfolio, but some irrational relationship constraints keep me attached to the advisors, as significant cost each year. Since I can't resolve the opposing positions of hiring expertise versus trusting my own investment sense, I have kept the advisors. I think I'll begin building a parallel set of accounts to give me something useful to do and scratch my investment strategy itch.
My wife and I are in between the contributor and the recipient phase in our retirement assets. We are both earning income on a part time basis, contributing to 401k accounts to take advantage of the employer match, but also supplementing our monthly income stream with modest distributions from the IRAs. I am taking episodic distributions from my Roth IRA to support a sizeable remodeling project on our home. My hope is that the current market performance will maintain the corpus of our retirement assets during this interval and once our remodeling project is complete, we'll have lower expenses and will begin the planning for "downsizing". The first phase of downsizing will be simply to resume renting out our ADU in the basement and reducing our financial footprint, once we're able to move back into the main floor of our home. We have one significantly increased line item in the expense ledger; college tuition. That'll be with us another 3+ years.
I think we'll be ready to leave the current home about when Alex graduates from college. That gives us 3+ years to upgrade, enjoy and wait for a better interest rate environment to exchange residences. That also means age 67 for each of us, perhaps the right time to apply for our SSI benefits and kiss employment goodbye.
When I started this journal, I didn't know how I would be prepared for retirement. I had no timeline, certainly didn't believe I would leave my surgical career earlier than late 60's, even 70's. Life turned out differently. Still, we have enough saved and working for us to be secure and meet our obligations. God is good, thus far we enjoy reasonably good health and look forward to where we'll land when the boy is fully fledged.
