Do The Work You Love to Do Now

Retirement is a made-up word, not a life

My network of networks across more than 600 callings and professions has many brilliant people past 50. None of them are planning for retirement. They know it won’t happen because retirement is a made-up word and not what they are doing now.

Storytelling, networks, and writing are my life, and inspiration for today’s story comes from Katherine Merritt of Soul Letters Substack. It’s one of many “not retirement” tales I hear every week.

Katherine writes, “The word retirement has never fit the life I want. I’m not trying to reach the end of my working life. I’m trying to make the work I love the work I do. That’s what I want. Time that’s mine to fill however I choose.”

In her article What I Envy About My Retired Neighbor, Katherine writes, “Somewhere along the way, I picked up the idea that there’s a right way to do this. Work hard, retire at 65, and then your time is finally yours. Like a finish line. And if you didn’t cross it on schedule, you’d fallen behind.

But that only works if we’re all on the same path, heading to the same place.”

Credit Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash

For 20,000 years, retirement was not a thing

Before jumping into your “not retirement” story or mine, we need to see when stories about this started. Human societies have been living, loving, and working together for more than 20,000 years. Retirement is a word, not you. It’s an artificial place where insurance companies stick a pin in your life.

Before 1889, retirement was not a concept. For almost all of human history, people worked until they were physically unable to work, then relied on family or community support when their bodies gave out. The average life expectancy then was 45 years.

The universal standardization of 65 as the age of retirement came from the United States during the Great Depression. The Social Security Act of 1935 picked 65 as the point of worker relief with budget limits. The average life expectancy at that point was 62 years.

Credit Geralt

My Not Retirement Story

What can life be like after 65? For my father, who lived to 90 and was a loyal, responsible, valued executive in one of the top 15 corporations in the Fortune 500 most of his career, he said this about his years after the retirement ceremony, after no more suits and ties with starched shirts: “When did I have time to go to work? I’ve got more going on now than ever before.”

Somewhere around 45 or 50, many people sort out who is in charge of the rest of their life. Will it be themselves or will they continue to run on the scripts and prompts provided by others who need individuals to continue for other’s purposes, not yours?

For me, it was 35 when I decided self-employment was better than a regular paycheck that stayed the same whether I made millions for the employer or slacked off this month. What made more sense was greater pay for greater effort—unlimited raises for unlimited innovation and results. No glass ceiling. Something better than even a heart surgeon who has limits, placed by others, on how much money they get for a surgical procedure. On days when I wasn’t 100% sure of what I was doing, I learned to do it with such confidence and conviction that people still put me in the leadership position and followed. Fortunately, there were mentors every decade who made sure I did not crash and burn.

I could have done it sooner, but at 65 I moved from the Washington, DC Metro area where I had more than 30 years invested in relationship building and a network of networks across more than 600 different industries. Physical separation from a large ecosystem came at the same time that most of my professional friends had built up their blogs and online skills for more than 10 years.

Aging has plenty of benefits such as wisdom, selectivity, and intentional choices.For many people, including most of the individuals I prefer to hang with as we continue to learn and earn, 50 to 65 means we give ourselves permission to go for the moonshot. Wisdom said, Of all of the things you do best and enjoy the most, what is it others still need and it is your gift, your everyday genius, and energizes? Selectivity said, Who are the people who are worthy of your time, attention, and introductions to others in your network? Intentional said, What will you design, deliver, and keep refining every day because of the people in your network?

Community Building? Close But No Cigar.

My moonshot is the online global community started with the inspiration of others in my network. It carries the name of who we want to serve, interview, and feature in our storytelling for the rest of our lives: Gifted Professionals and Communicators.

Community is a word that is not precise enough, but it’s a start. Exposure to several hundred others who claimed to build communities taught us there is much misunderstanding and abuse of that word. We mean relationships and conversations in psychologically safe places. We mean investing time and attention in others as a long-term, sustainable condition.

What turned us off to the word community was the ways others used it to substitute for what we already knew to be membership associations and marketing sales funnels. Those are transactions and not relationships. It’s done in plain sight and right on their web pages and emails, as they put the emphasis on getting you to spend your time and money on events, hotel rooms, travel expenses, training programs, online courses, and their products.

Other conversations that use the word community went sideways rapidly for us when we noticed it was all about software and technology tools. We were invited to events for community builders which turned out to be a marketplace and exposition for software manufacturers. They didn’t care about what or why we wanted to engage with people who are constantly serving and refining their own networks and support systems. They just wanted attendance numbers and buyers delivered to the manufacturers, also paying them for booth space and access to the open bar receptions.

We are still working on a better way to describe the online ecology of gifted professionals and communicators who have joined us in the past five years.Subscribers and members are collaborating with me now to create a landing page that tells the story better and provides specific examples of what happens inside our network of networks.

Until we get that finished and published, please go to the form at the bottom of our GPC Page and join, so that we can include you in the network and private email within the community.

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We’re on a mission to feature stories about professionals who are initiating meaningful conversations with other gifted minds and storytellers—and who they serve.

My clients are experts who don’t need more information. They need decisions and a system that matches their brain to turn ideas into stories and stories into NOW results. Not “someday” and not “after I feel ready.”