In the late 1960’s, Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross published On Death and Dying, in which she described the five stages of grief:  Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.  I became familiar with this theory a decade later when the 99¢ theatre I worked at in high school (yes, that was a thing and yes, I’m that old) showed Roy Scheider in All That Jazz. The film’s climax involves the lead character going through these five stages with much music, drama and “jazz hands”.

Anyway, the thesis I would like to present over the next few essays is that, similar to the grieving process (in more ways than one), there are five stages of transitioning into retirement.  You MUST progress through all five, in order.  Residence time in each stage will depend upon your unique situation.  Recycling is allowed.  Herewith, the five stages that we will explore:

1. Detox, in which our protagonist does basically nothing (except a little drooling) to allow the trauma of the workplace to leave the system;
2. Endless Vacation, in which our hero finally realizes that there is no pit in the stomach on Sunday nights, begins to relax, and starts doing all those things on the “when I retire” list.  Note that this particular list is not filled with admirable things like “giving back” or “producing something of value”.  This list includes “sleeping as late as I want”, “exercising whenever I want; or not”, “making an entire day out of going to the bank” and other low stress activities.
3. What Day is it? when our central character suddenly realizes that, um, maybe a little structure in my life is a good thing.
4. Catharsis, in which our star sifts through the possibilities of “things I want to do” that are a bit more constructive, tries a few on for size, and finds something that actually feels good.
5. The New Normal, in which our champion finishes the transition to retirement—for the time being.  Note that you are allowed to cycle through these steps as many times as you’d like, as you tire of whatever “new normal” you’ve settled upon.

So, let’s take a leisurely stroll through these stages.  I’ll use my own experience as an example, of course, along with those of others I know.  Identities will be lightly disguised as necessary since I don’t really plan to ask people permission to write about them.

Stage 1:  Detox

Everyone must go through detox!  There will be temptation to hurry through.  Don’t do it.  You NEED this time.  If you rush into something right away because you feel you should be busy, you will just delay detox until you DO finally sit still.  There is most likely a direct correlation between stress level in the job and needed detox time—and an inverse correlation with level of preparedness for what comes next.  Sit there and drool.  Walk in the woods.  Binge watch Game of Thrones.  Let your brain do what it needs to do.  A lucky few people will have found their passion early enough to make it their career.  Most of us find a career first and our passion only comes to the surface later.  Let it come. 

Everyone has their own detox story.  The first I’ll share is from a colleague I’ll call “David”.   David was about a decade older than me and someone who I always felt was too nice for someone so senior in the organization.  We’d have business lunches together, but rarely talk about business.  When he reached “Rule of 80,” I asked him why he didn’t retire right then.  (Rule of 80 was a benefit wherein if you were 55 and had at least 25 years of service, you could retire and start pulling your full pension right away.  It was my dream to reach Rule of 80 at 55.)  He said, “Once I hit the KMA [Kiss My Ass] Day, I realized I could walk anytime I wanted and my stress level immediately dropped.  I decided I’d stay a bit longer.”  David had a LOT of volunteer activities going on outside of work:  with his church, at a local fishing lake,  with Engineers without Borders, etc.  When he did finally retire, he said to me, “Well, it finally got to the point that I just didn’t have time to work anymore.”  I’m guessing David’s detox time was about as long as his drive home.

At the other end of the spectrum was “Steve”.  At the time I let Steve go, I was managing a support organization within Air Products and our budget was funded by the businesses.  We sold a business and I needed to let one headcount go to account for that loss of budget.  I hated firing people.  My fire to hire ratio at Air Products was about 30:1 because of the difficult times (remember the Great Recession?).  Steve had been roaming the halls for years, loudly stating that he wanted “a package”.  This meant a healthy severance check as he walked out the door.  Steve was entirely retirement eligible and his primary role was supporting the business that had just been sold.  This would be the easiest firing I’d ever done!  On the day Steve was brought to my office, I launched into the perfunctory business case.  The look on his face—you would have thought I’d just killed his dog!  Then he lost his temper and yelled at me for 10 minutes on how loyal an employee he’d been!  I was stunned.  Turns out, Steve wasn’t ready.  He hadn’t thought about what was next for him much less considered the need to detox.  He wanted to work until he didn’t and THEN he wanted that package.  I sped up his timing and it shook him.  I’m guessing Steve’s detox took months. 

My situation was somewhere between those two.  I started thinking about retirement about a nanosecond after I started working.  Don’t get me wrong—I had a great career with many satisfying achievements and good memories.  I was focused on what I needed to do in whatever role I was in, cognizant of the number of people depending upon me to do a good job.  However, if I hit the lottery, my resignation letter would have been on my boss’ desk the next day.  I’m not one of those people who, supposedly, “never worked a day in [their] life!” because they so loved what they did.  I worked and I worked hard.  For a long time.  And from the beginning, I planned my finances so that, should I choose at the time, I could retire when I turned 55.  This dream was strongly reinforced in my 40’s as colleagues I was close to started to reach that milestone and march off into the sunset.  I would meet them for lunch or dinner occasionally and see how much happier and younger they looked, hear about their adventures, and generally be pissed off that I still had 10 years to go.

I lost my job when I was about a year away from turning 55.  I saw it coming.  I was not heartbroken.  But it was still a shock when it DID happen.  I came home that day with a shell shocked grin (if that can happen).  My detox took a couple of weeks, on and off.

When will you know you’ve had enough time to detox?  Well, the best way I can describe it is that you’ll wake up one morning and suddenly realize you are seeing in color again.  Then it’s time to move on to Stage 2:  Endless Vacation.  We’ll pick up on that next time.