Do you enjoy your job?
It’s one of my favorite brags. I am not retired. I run a small access television organization full-time and am not retired. Yes, I do not labor as hard as I once did at other jobs, but I still supervise my small crew, handle technology upgrades and ensure the station automation is working. And yes, I do enjoy my job.
However, whenever I check in for lab work or visit a specialist, they all assume that being seventy-six, I am retired. So I make a point of having it changed to employed. But the next time I visit, it’s back to retired. It’s like I should know my place in the scheme of things, cease all toil, and do what is bureaucratically convenient.
Just today, our Town’s annual census form was returned to us; we had forgotten to sign it. But what was this? My employment status had been changed by the infamous “powers that be” from employed to retired. So I crossed out the handwritten notation with my note – ” employed!!!!”
I may not be retired at seventy-six, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be a cranky old cuss when I want to be: “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
The preconceived notion of retirement boggles the mind. I worked beyond retirement age because I liked my job. Why quit? My doctors, too, would say, ‘Still working?’ like it was such a strange thing. When I announced my retirement, coworkers first question to me was, “What will you do?” Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
We should be beyond simplistic definitions by now. But people find them so easy to trot out.