I never really wanted to work. My father had other ideas.

After high school, my father had a full scholarship to college to develop his wonderful bass voice. Unfortunately his late teens and early twenties were interrupted by the death of his parents, and the subsequent requirement that he take over the family printing business and support and raise his sister, eight years his junior.

Responsibility was such a core value for him. I heard so many lectures on the subject I called it the  “R-Word.”

I liked to play, and in my first six or seven years of life, I had family playmates. My sister regressed seven years to be my first playmate, and my father, who was always full of fun, told us fantastic stories, and “roughhoused” with little regard for anything that might get broken.

About the time when the money from the sale of the printing business was gone, and my mother went back to work to help with the expense of the good-schools-town we moved to, my father’s “R-word” gene kicked in. I think he must have decided I was spoiled (yep), and that I would never learn to work.

He began an “R-word infusion campaign,” which I resented and rebelled against. I fought him by refusing to do chores, and spending allowance money on teeth-cavity-makers. My mouth is now an advertisement for the dental industry as I have every kind of dental work known to man.

He “found” me so many jobs I hated that I ultimately started finding my own jobs to end his campaign. I worked after school and summers in high school, and college and went to business school to become a consultant. I was such an eager-beaver that I extended my consulting summer internship to work full time as a consultant during my second year at the London Business School.

Then I worked hundred hour weeks, started consulting businesses, and worked until all my clients either retired or died. So I guess the “R-word” campaign worked.

Still, I dreamed my whole life of retirement.

My father retired early, a function of computers taking his newspaper typesetting job. My mother retired at sixty-five from her computer programming career. They traveled including a nine month round-the-world freighter cruise in the 1970s, before container ships eliminated that possibility for the rest of us.

Maybe that inspired my friend Ben who kicked off a conversation.

“You know, I think retirement is wasted on old people. Think about it; you work your whole life, maybe taking a week off here or there, and then, when you’re so old and tired that you can’t really do anything, you ‘retire.’ If you were a horse, they’d put you out to pasture; at least you’d get some good grass.”

We might or might not have been smoking marijuana at the time.

We then redesigned the economy, and the world of work.

“OK, so you could get out of school and work for a couple of years, maybe as many as ten to get some knowledge and skills. Then you ‘retire,’ travel the world, maybe study a little more, maybe work a little in other cultures. Then when you’re almost dead, say 50, they hire you back for the benefit of all that international exposure. Then you work ‘till you drop, supporting the next crop of twenty-eight year old assholes like us.”

“Sounds like a great plan. Who do we talk to?”

“Nah, ya can’t. Anybody who could make that decision is at least sixty and dreaming of retirement.”

“Damn.”

I retired at seventy. I hit the revenue rollercoaster trough, one big project ends and I meet with referral sources to find my next project.  As I said, most of my clients had either retired or died, so I was emailing, cold calling, and getting first meetings with people I didn’t know.

My business partner wanted to keep working, but his cancer treatments kept him from making the meetings. I wasn’t liking the marketing drill  ̶ “kept-waiting-thirty-minutes-in-the lobby-then-“What-is it you-do?”

I was ready. I had a plan. I would write stories and songs, and do some wood carving again. Billie and I would travel some. I was in good shape, running a little.

Of course, the moment I declared myself “retired,” some clients, and old colleagues, came out of the bushes. I was firm in my decision.

“No, thanks. I’m retired.”

“Yeah, but this is just one project. It won’t take that long.”

“Thanks, anyway.”

“Really? You’re going to turn this down?”

“Yep. Like I said, ‘retired.’”

“Wow. What are you going to do?”

“Write. Travel.”

“What are you going to write about?”

“Share what I learned over my career.”

“But you could do that while you did this project; we’ve got some young people who could learn a lot from you.”

“Thanks anyway.”

“Really? Wow. I don’t think I could ever retire.”

This is a conversation I still have occasionally  ̶  not as much as I used to. I know people my age and older still working. Some tried retirement and gave up.

“I didn’t know what to do.”

I used to see executives at big companies, “take a package and retire early,” only to come back as “consultants” six months later.”

“My wife’s still working.” Or “She didn’t want me around the house, and there is only so much golf you can play.”

Truthfully, I might have been enticed back to the intense learning curves and rapid problem solving of consulting if I hadn’t tripped on a root while running. I ended up having neck surgery, which took six months of recovery, then Covid hit. Now Artificial Intelligence is turning consulting upside down. I am happy not to be in the middle of that.

Most importantly, I have a new career. I am writing. I have published two books to share what I learned in change consulting, and have a third coming out soon. What I make from this new career is not nothing, and is getting better, but fortunately, we have reduced expenses, and don’t have to make lots of money anymore.

The downside of this career is that it is solitary. I sit and stare at a computer screen too much. The interactions with people that used to fill my days have to be planned for with neighbors, friends and those with shared interests.

Billie and I are healthy. A friend of my sister said, “After fifty, it’s patch, patch, patch.” We laugh, at how our annual physicals are followed up with multiple follow-up specialists medical appointments, “Just to be sure.” We did not realize it at the time,  but in our fifties and sixties, we invested in our health-retirement fund by eating right and exercising. That means in our seventies we can crawl on the floor with grandchildren, see family, and travel, in between doctors’ appointments and entertainment. “How did we ever find time to work?”

Maybe I’m not really “retired,” just in a different brand of self-employment. Whatever I call it, I don’t feel that retirement is wasted on me.