Retired a year; still don't know what I want to do for a living

It's just over year since my last day of paid employment, and I thought this would be a good time to reflect on how I feel about retirement.

In general, I love being retired.

I'm fortunate enough to have a roof over my head, and no shortage of money. I'm in sound health, and my blood pressure has responded well to the reduced stress. My wife is also retired and, for the most part, we don't get on each others' nerves all that much. I wake every morning full of enthusiasm for the day ahead.

And yet... I can't avoid a nagging feeling that something isn't... well, isn't quite right. The feeling is always there, hiding in the dark; but sometimes it flares up and surprises me, like a rat scurrying out of the log pile when I reach down to collect firewood.

I'm aware that retirement can be a shock, that it isn't something you can really prepare for. But I don't think my lingering uncertainty is something that bothers other folks. At least, it's not something they talk about.

It's not that I can no longer fill my day with hours; I never relied on work to give me something to do, or to structure my day. I never worried that I'd be bored after retirement. On the contrary, I'm busier that I've ever been. I exercise more; I'm learning to read classical Latin; I have a huge backlog of domestic maintenance to catch up on; I'm involved with a heap of new, tech stuff; I play chess most days; I look after my woods, and so on. In fact, I struggle to find time to do everything I want, and I go to bed exhausted every day, just as I always did.

So it's not that.

I'm told that many people experience a loss of their sense of self when they retire, as if they were defined by their employment. But it isn't work that gave me my sense of identify. If you'd asked me five years ago: "What are you?" I wouldn't have said "I'm a computer programmer." To be honest, I'm not sure how I'd have replied to such a question, except with puzzlement. I've done many different jobs over my working life, but none was ever more than that -- a job. If I ever had an identify, it didn't come from my work.

So it's not that, either.

Then there's the social aspect of work, of course. Many people have a social circle made up largely of workmates. That was true for me, too -- in my thirties. But my colleagues have been dotted around the globe for the last twenty-odd years. It's no harder for me to communicate with them now, than it was when we worked together. In any case, my social life hasn't been associated with my workplace for a long time.

No, that's not it.

No: I think what makes me a little uncomfortable is that my working life seems to have started only yesterday, and it's already over. Forty years have gone by, and I hardly noticed. What did I do in the last forty years?

It's not as if I felt a sense of progression, or development, in my work. I never became a captain of industry or Lord Chief Justice. I'm not sure I'd have wanted that stress, anyway, even if it had ever been on the cards. I never numbered rampant ambition among my many faults. Still, the apparent brevity of my working lifetime continues to nag at me, and it's not just the sense of time having flown by.

When I was a young man, I imagined that one day I'd be a different person. Rather than a tiny cog in the vast machine of society, I'd eventually be a big wheel, I thought. People would look up to me, and take me seriously. They'd seek my opinion, and take it under serious consideration when I gave it. I'd have a measure of authority perhaps or, at least, seniority. I'd know where I was going, and how I'd get there.

As time went by, though, I eventually came to realize that none of this was going to happen. At sixty I was essentially the same confused, inadequate child that I'd been at sixteen. My waistline grew, but my status didn't. People, I realized, weren't going to bow down to me, or even treat me with much respect. Nobody sought me out for my expertise, or did anything differently on my advice. They weren't going to name a building after me, or build a statue.

In the end, I finished my working life the way I began it: as an insignificant, entirely expendable drone, working for a pay-check and little else.

So here I am, an ageing, retired man still waiting for adulthood to begin; still waiting to make the decisions that will shape my life for the decades to come.

The problem isn't that my working life is over, it's that it never really started.

Published 2026-02-25, updated 2026-02-25

Retired a year; still don't know what I want to do for a living

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