There is a fine line between being retired and being unemployed but not really needing or expecting to get another job.
Some people make their retirement ‘official’ by announcing it and resigning from their jobs, and maybe throwing a retirement party. Or maybe by claiming their pensions or social security benefits. Some people are lucky enough to get a retirement incentive package, accepting one of those maybe makes a retirement official. But these retirement markers are not irreversible, many people who have ‘officially’ retired can and do re-enter the workforce. So I think retirement is a state of mind, rather than some kind of official status.
In my case, I was not given the opportunity to choose my moment to retire, as I was rather abruptly and unceremoniously laid off due to a change in company ownership.
This happened on the day before my 62nd birthday.
Up until that point, I really liked my job. It easily met my primary criterion for liking a job: the work was very engaging.
I had been working at that job for over 10 years, and in the same industry doing essentially the same work for another 8 years prior to that. I was arguably one of the most experienced and productive developers. Through many years of great performance reviews and raises, I considered my pay to be excellent. Probably too excellent, as I’m sure that I was let go as part of cutting costs. I was planning on staying in that job for another 3-5 years at least before retiring, so I was not really prepared for retirement when I was laid off.
According to a 2023 study by the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies, 56% of retirees similarly did not get a chance to choose their moment to retire, and entered retirement sooner than expected through job loss or for health reasons. That same article has a wealth of statistics concerning retirement, for example at least 8% of people who have retired have then ‘unretired’.
So at the moment I consider myself to be ‘officially’ just unemployed, but I’m in a financial situation where I can be picky about pursuing new jobs. Any new job would have to be not just monetarily attractive, but also intellectually attractive. I don’t really want to move anywhere for the sake of a new job. Because of the high bar I have set, and my age, I acknowledge that I’m very unlikely to find a new job. So I also consider myself to be ‘practically’ retired. Or maybe ‘mostly’ retired.
Regardless of my retired/unemployed status, I found that I had extra time on my hands so I naturally fell into a pattern of keeping my brain active by learning and exploring various topics that interest me. Since I hadn’t mentally closed the door on getting another job, I deliberately chose to pursue some projects where I would develop some skills that might conceivably help me to get a desirable job. But appeal to potential employers was only a secondary reason for choosing a project - the primary consideration was that I was interested in the topic itself. Some future posts will detail some of these efforts, you can find them under the Projects and Coding tags.
