Accidental Retirement. Purposeful Reinvention.
“When one door closes, another one opens,” said Alexander Graham Bell. And it was the first thing that went through my mind when I accidentally retired from my work in the public sector last November. Except in my case, the door was not only closed it was locked. Unbeknownst to me, my office access card had been prematurely deactivated before my last day at work. In the time it takes for a bathroom break I’d gone from fully employed to standing outside my now locked office door watching the light flash red on the access card reader: Entry Denied. It was like the Universe did a foot stomp to make sure I’d gotten the message loud and clear: Move. On.
While I had resigned on purpose and while I had every intention of closing the door myself on that chapter of my professional life; somewhere in the back of my mind lurked the slacker sentiment that I could still go back. I talked big for several years about all I wanted to do and explore someday. And I also talked as though that someday were right around the corner. Yet there was always a reason why someday was tomorrow and not today. I tried working more. I tried working less. I tried doing different things in the same environment. Always hoping I would find that one right option that would let me have both my today and my someday. Each foray manifesting the same results of feeling stagnant and stifled. So as I contemplated that locked office door, it dawned on me that someday had arrived.
Initially, I was fist-pumping excited about starting a new professional chapter, creating a new path. Quitter’s remorse replaced euphoria though as I faced the reality of going it on my own. My work routine had been changed by the pandemic, but I’d still been going into the office every other week, taking comfort from the routine and the built-in community. Now I had seeming acres of unstructured time each day. Alone in my home office, I began to see my previous work in the rosy light of reminiscence. Tellingly, I discovered Bell’s well-known quote as most of us know it is incomplete, the full quote is:
“When one door closes another one opens, but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.”
That closed door was starting to look good to me. I started feeling like a contestant on an old game show who had chosen the door with a lifetime supply of baked beans behind it instead of the one which hid a new car. Those ideas that had looked so exciting to me when someday was a distant and fuzzy concept in the future now seemed foolish and trite. At a particularly low point, while I was fixing dinner, I wished for something, anything, to happen so I wouldn’t have to keep up the pretense that I knew what I was doing, that there was anything worth doing. Within two hours, I received a message from a former colleague asking me to come back. Whew! I had another chance! The locked door was now being held open, I could go back to what I knew, go back on autopilot, and kick someday further down the road to a time in the future when I was REALLY ready. My husband offered little comment on this news other than the suggestion to sleep on the offer before responding. I acquiesced, smiling; after all, what difference would a few hours make? Whether I put the process in motion right away or the next morning, the door was open and I could go back leaving uncertainty and uncomfortableness behind me.
The next day, I looked again at the message beckoning me back through the door. And I decided not to walk back through, but to close the door — this time I was the one doing the locking! The decision didn’t make me feel any more certain and it didn’t inspire an Archimedes style “Eureka!” moment accompanied with clarity of what my future will be. There was new awareness and clarity, however, around all I would have to give up to go back into my old job; ultimately, it was a trade-off that just wasn’t worth a fleeting sense of relief.
You see, my someday imaginings had a pretty big gap between relinquishing the old and starting the new, kind of like the vague cloud often seen on complex explainer diagrams labeled, “then a miracle occurs.” Specifically, I’d not considered the planning and work required to envision and build this new chapter. Continuing to stand still because I wasn’t sure what direction I was going in was not getting me anywhere and so I started taking steps — I’m talking very small steps. Craving structure, I started to create some — taking a walk each day, setting goals for myself around new skills, training, and reading. Craving connection, I joined groups, participating in workshops and events on a wide variety of topics just because they sparked my curiosity. Craving certainty, I returned to my mindfulness and meditation practices as a way to find grounding and to calm my anxiety. Each of these steps gave me a sense of progress, guiding me in the process of reinvention; and offering insights into not only what I wanted to do, but also who I wanted to be in this new space and time of life.
Reinvention isn’t a linear process with a fixed timeline and definite end. In the four months since leaving my old job, I’ve found some answers and also found lots of new questions. There have been days where my energy and enthusiasm are boundless, there are others when I just want to pull the duvet over my head. The doubts and uncertainties haven’t been banished, they still surface maddeningly, often in the small hours of the night (usually around 2 am). Yet, as uncomfortable as figuring out what this new chapter sometimes is, as lonely and effortful as the process of personal reinvention sometimes feels, I am no longer putting off my someday. I continue to explore and experiment, intentionally working out what I want to do and who I want to be in this new chapter. Facing the uncertainty and uncomfortableness with curiosity is enabling me to do the work and begin opening doors to new possibilities.