INTP in retirement

[FrankS]

I'm just about to head into retirement and find it pretty daunting. Even though work has had its INTP challenges - lots of customer contact, team effort and management for an INTP - the idea of the isolation of retirement has a combination of appeal and terror. I don't have any inclination to be idle for the next 25 years, but also don't have a lot of interest in the typical retirement prescriptions of volunteerism. I'm thinking of writing a book - that seems to be a good fit - but fear that maintaining daily motivation is the big challenge. Are there any retirees in the forum who have mastered the transition from work to non-work? As background, I have worked in marketing for technical small businesses for my career.

 

[Happy]

Hi Frank. Welcome to the forum

A preamble: I'm certainly nowhere near the age of retiring

While I may not be able to share the perspective of having worked toward retirement for many years, I feel as if this places me on the outskirts of the problem and therefore in the perfect position to ask of you:

Why does retirement mean you need to stop working?

Or perhaps more pertinently, why should retirement equate to a resignation to idleness?

Why can't retirement mean a rebirth?

I'd like to imagine that a long career in marketing, specialising in small business, had afforded you the wisdom of how to make a small business thrive. Maybe it's time to show them all how it's done?

Or maybe you can fill the role of a mentor? Or educator?

Actually, the place that I work deliberately hires people who are in the transition to retirement, and they act as mentors to the younger staff. It's so great for younger people like me, in the early years of their careers, to have this resource and dialogue available.

What about that dream of running a marathon? Or backpacking around the globe?

[I'm starting to ramble now, I'd better wrap it up]

What I'm trying to say is that I don't accept this idea of retirement having a pre-defined form and I don't believe you should subscribe to it either.

 

[EditorOne]

I'm retired, now 67, started at 59. So far I've learned a new occupation (public insurance adjuster), written a couple of books, and done home improvement after home improvement. Recently I built a boat. I also started a blog on one of my ongoing interests, the American Civil War. I've also had a new knee installed, a nerve relocated in my elbow and, most recently, a stent installed in the widowmaker artery. My wife and I are also traveling, although it's pretty much in week-long tourist-mode chunks rather than my ideal goal of four to six months in a foreign country at a whack. That may still happen, the issue is her health, which requires fairly frequent medical involvement. But it's still good, it's just life shaped to the realities but not surrendered to them.

Retirement is whatever you want.

On the book? I can be more helpful there.

Set a minimum goal for whenever you sit down to write, a goal you can't get out of your seat without meeting. Mine was 2,000 words, but that included reading the last 2,000 words and editing them, to pull back the hammer on that day's writing, so to speak, before pulling the trigger on the new goal. If you read, and edit, and then start, it actually goes faster, because you've refreshed your mind on the big picture in your head and can pick up the story a lot faster. Also, if you're hardcore INTP, envisioning the entire project each day is non-motivational, while envisioning just the next 2,000 words (or whatever) is.

I hasten to note that this was a pretty easy pattern for me, as a newspaper journalist for my entire life. All human experience is reduced to a daily output of less than 2,000 words for journalists. :-) Your mileage may vary.

I think it is helpful to opt for looking forward to retirement as an opportunity. Mine, due to the national economy and the pathetic condition of the newspaper industry, came a bit sooner than I'd have liked, so I had to deal with frustration for a couple of years. And I have to say this forum was helpful in that, even though my specific issues were never addressed on the forum. It is simply therapeutic to be among people who accept me for the introverted, sardonic bastard that I am. :-)

 

[FrankS]

Thanks to both of you for your responses. As I mentioned, I'm moving towards retirement but still actively engaged in the small business, so it took me a while to get back to the forum. The idea of building a business in retirement has some appeal, including the idea of some small business marketing consulting as Happy suggests. Needless to say, to an INTP, a second career dependent on networking and relationships is a tough sell, even if I would love to share what I've learned with others new to the game. Lots of folks have suggested (after training sessions or presentations) that I'd make a good teacher, so that's an option, with some of the same reservations. The book may have to be the starting point; I have talked about that and thought about it for years; getting it done would be a huge boost and an apparently good fit to the inclination to solitary, intellectual effort. The non-fiction topics I have in mind are not likely to race to the top of the best seller lists, so the small business "promote without spending a lot of money" skills could serve me well. I'm not expecting to make a killing off anything I write.

I've always just put one foot in front of the other in my life, and then just worked my butt off, and it has worked out well, but that also means that I don't have a bucket list of big dreams to fulfill at this point. I've saved well over the years, so retirement should be relatively secure, even in the absence of a pension, but doesn't include the budget for country-club memberships and lots of world travel. I want to travel some, as a reward for my wife and me after years of careful spending, but not as the focus of the next 20 years.

Because of all that it's the prospect of fruitfully occupying day-to-day that I find most intimidating. The writing could solve that, as long as I can organize a deadline-free life to get it done. A rigid 2000 word a day goal may have to be part of the formula. Progress on the book may also help me resist the urges of a wife (and mental health gurus) who all want me to teach and travel and volunteer and socialize. If I'm productively using my time, maybe I can at least convince myself and demonstrate to others that the retirement years are not being frittered away. If you can feel the fear, you get my current perspective.

 

[EditorOne]

OK, not 2,000 a day: 2,000 whenever you sit down to write. :-) Don't set yourself up for failure. That's why editing the last 2,000 words is so important, it primes the pump and gets you back to where you were the last time yout sat down to write, even if it was a week ago. It is probably better to do it several times a week, sure, but not every day, you'll burn out. I need down time between writing sessions to let my subconscious or whatever process where I am with the writing and come up with insights and nuances and ideas to inform further writing.

Good luck with it all, also a notation that getting older is not for the faint of heart....