Life After Retirement: Veteran LA Times Columnist Steve Lopez Explores How to Think About Who We Are When We Untangle Ourselves From Our Jobs

I’m one of seventy-five million boomers, many of whom are trying to figure out what to do as the clock winds down, and the simple truth is that, for a lot of us, there are no easy or correct answers. You’d think a lifetime of decision-making would sharpen your skills. After all, you muddle through the years deciding what to wear, what to eat, what to drive, what to do for a living, where to live, when to get married, when to get divorced, whether to have kids, and when to kick them out of the house. But none of this helps when it’s time to make the toughest remaining decision in your rapidly dwindling life: when to get out of the race.

On days when I’m convinced it’s time to go, a smile of freedom crosses my face. Then a big story breaks—the virus, the economic collapse, the marches that echo the sixties—and I’m like a racehorse in the gate, ready to run. In my job, the combination of passion and panic has kept me alive. There’s always a task at hand, and I’ve got to deliver, because the world still needs me.

Doesn’t it?

The financial part is a tough enough puzzle on its own, unless you’re rich, because you have no idea whether you need your money to last a few years or a few decades. But the part that scares me more than any of that is an even greater unknown.

When I finally walk away, how much of me stays behind?

To paraphrase Robert Louis Stevenson, to be idle requires a strong sense of personal identity.  Right now, as a working man, a husband, and a father, my identity is as clear as my face in the mirror. It’s there that I see the spark of inspiration for the next thing I write.

The monster is hungry and has to be fed.

I see inspiration and I see dread.

I can’t even remember the last thing I wrote, which might be a sign of creeping dementia, or maybe it’s because the job is always about the next one, the next one, and the next one, with no time to look back. The calendar may say I’m old, but the clock says I’m about to be born again. I’ve got to pay attention, which keeps me invested in the world, in the neighborhood, in the small victories and broken dreams of readers who send me their thoughts, their hopes, their fears, their gripes, their stories. I am alive through them, a member of a community. Some of them send me nice notes and good ideas, and some of them are dead certain I’m an unredeemable idiot, and they are never shy about telling me so.

That’s how the mail goes.

The feathers tickle, the darts sting, the blood pumps.

I’m alive.

I once wrote about a Los Angeles algebra teacher who hit forced retirement age, signed all the papers, formally checked out, and then returned to the same school on the first day of the next semester as a volunteer teacher. This teacher knew who he was. Teaching was not a job. It was not a paycheck. It was his identity.

What is mine?

***

In nearly half a century, I’ve met and written about thousands of people. I’d like to think I really got to know some of them, but there’s seldom been time to linger with a person or a thought before speeding away like a hit-and-run driver. The irony is that for someone who has tried to understand so many people—by their actions, words, even the look in their eyes—I’ve never spent much time looking in the mirror. Maybe it’s because I’m not inclined toward self-examination or maybe it’s because I haven’t had the time. But before moving forward with a decision on how to spend the rest of my life, I think it might help to check in with two people I know who are in the business of professional guidance: an analyst and a rabbi.

The analyst asks me not to use his name, and there’s an interesting reason for his request: he is considering retirement himself, date undetermined, but he hasn’t yet let his colleagues or clients know. That’s kind of a lucky break for me, because he’s been balancing many of the same pros and cons as I have. For the sake of convenience, I’m going to call him Dr. Bob. I’m not in therapy and haven’t been counseled by Dr. Bob before now, but I know him through another therapist, and I know that Dr. Bob is highly regarded in his profession, both as a therapist and as a teacher of psychologists in training. Dr. Bob tells me the teaching is so fulfilling for him, the thought of letting go is giving him pause.

“I want to be around young people, and I have been for so much of my life. They’re alive,” says Dr. Bob, who is in his seventies and could, of course, find ways to continue mentoring in retirement. You never master therapy and you’re always learning, says Dr. Bob, but you do become a wiser practitioner over time, and it would be a shame to waste all that wisdom. As for the other aspects of his job, which involve administrative duties he doesn’t much care for, and seeing clients, which is both a great service and a weighty responsibility, Dr. Bob feels he is finally, after much thought, moving closer to letting go. “It’s been a really hard issue, and I’ve only just started to round the corner, where I feel that my identity won’t be lost if I stop practicing,” he says.

I can relate to the “hard issue” part, and I ask Dr. Bob what brought him to the point of a breakthrough.

“I just started feeling, about a year ago, that I don’t have to be a psychologist in a formal sense,” he says. “I just don’t have to. And up until that point I took it as gospel that I did. So it may be that there’s a point at which it happens or not. And if it does, fine.” Dr. Bob says he recently told his wife, “You know, I really think I can give it up, and not because I’ve really thought it through. It’s just a feeling. And I don’t know anyone who can give you advice on that last point, because there are very few people in the world in the position you’re in. But I think probably that the same thing will work in your case, that gradually you’ll feel that you don’t have to be ‘Steve Lopez.’”

That actually holds some appeal, I tell Dr. Bob. I’ve always thrived on deadline pressure, but sorting through complicated issues, lining up interviews, and fighting traffic on reporting trips can be draining. And sometimes there’s breaking news on a subject I’m asked by my editors to write about, often in a hurry, say half a day or so, even though it’s a struggle to figure out whether I’ve got anything new to say. There’s also the pressure of keeping up with the herd. I tell Dr. Bob that it’s become a far more crowded stage in the last couple of years, as we’ve hired more columnists, some of them half my age. I tell him that one of the relatively new hires was asked to write a special feature on page one, serving in effect as the voice of the newspaper. A couple of years ago, I tell Dr. Bob, I would have been likely to get that assignment. So my first reaction at being overlooked this time around was a feeling of resentment, a feeling of being elbowed aside. “If they think they can put me out to pasture,” I thought, “they don’t know me.” But I calmed down so quickly, the turnaround surprised me. I came to the realization that the columnist chosen for the page-one assignment was a smart choice by the editors and better suited for this particular job than I would have been. Plus, I didn’t really need the extra work, as I was already juggling several projects. So not getting the call was a bit of a relief. There’s still a place for me in the lineup, I’m pretty sure. But I don’t have to be the leadoff batter or the cleanup guy. I’m still getting used to how that feels, but I think I can live with it.

Dr. Bob says that, as he hears me out, he’s listening to some- one in a pretty good situation. I’m not someone who doesn’t like what I do for a living. I’m not unhappy at home. I’ve got friends and loved ones and things I want to do and the ability to do them. I’ve got my health, so far. And yet here I am struggling to figure things out and going to him for help.

“Maybe the problem is that you think there’s a problem,” Dr. Bob says. “You may be creating a problem where one doesn’t exist, and the problem with all solutions is that they break down very quickly. Good ideas have a very short half-life. You’re lucky. You can continue the work you’ve always loved, and you can do it for as long as you like or not. And you can do other things as well. Love of writing isn’t what you’re complaining about. It’s the nature of the form. After fifty years of having to meet deadlines and feeling the responsibilities you have as a known figure, do you really want to hold on to that forever?”

Dr. Bob makes a good point. I’m at a fork in the road, not sure which way to go. That’s not a problem, it’s a set of options. But that doesn’t mean the right choice is obvious. I know the knowns. I know I can keep doing what I do, either full-time or part-time. I know I can quit altogether and do different kinds of writing, either for pay or just for the fun of it. I know I can probably go back to teaching, which I did for five years at Cal State Los Angeles, and I can find other things to do as well. It’s the unknowns that still perplex me. The questions about fulfillment, peace of mind, and how many healthy years I have ahead of me. If I could know I’m going to live to ninety in reasonably good shape, I think I’d work another five years or so. But if ten years of mobility and clarity are all I’ve got, I’d be more inclined to quit tomorrow. All of this complicates the decision, but in a year of milestones, not the least of which is [my daughter] Caroline’s departure, I don’t want to waste more time standing at a crossroads. And the more I think about Dr. Bob saying that in his own life he’s going with a feeling about retirement rather than thinking it through, the more I think I’d like to do it the other way around.

              
Taken from Independence Day: What I Learned About Retirement From Some Who’ve Done It And Some Who Never Will by Steve Lopez. Copyright © 2022 by Steve Lopez. Used by permission of Harper Horizon, a division of HarperCollins Focus, LLC. www.harpercollinsfocus.com. To order the book, click here.

Steve Lopez has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001 and is a four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. He is the author of three novels, two collections of columns, and the New York Times bestseller and award-winning, The Soloist. Lopez's TV reporting for KCET has won three local news Emmys and a share of the Columbia University DuPont Award.

Question from the Editor: Steve's insight into retirement and identity has us thinking: How entangled do you feel, or have you felt, with your job? We'd love to hear in the comments below!