Retirement Anniversary

Today marks one year since my retirement, though not necessarily since being a physician which has a way of appearing in different forms.  I've made one major trip, two brief overnight trips but not that much travel.  I still submit my monthly Medscape column, though it was a lot easier to do when part of medicine's pageant.  Even more so with KevinMD which has no forced deadline.  They have a dearth of retirees there.  I made sure that Sermo, which has funnelled into something of an echo chamber, gets rationed severely.  I don't miss it, even if it might have been my principle post-retirement connection to fellow physicians.  Facebook had become a time sink of little enduring value which I had to set limits twice, having failed on the first attempt.  My Ramapo High chums and less than chums have also largely retired.  I opted not to greet them panim el panim a few months ago for a lot of reasons ranging from expense to more fundamental principles of fairness and opportunity when they gathered for a 50th Reunion.  FB, while not an echo chamber, was a time sink that disclosed more about the people who lurk in cyberspace than I really want to know.

My house, long since paid for, has gotten attention.  The kitchen was redone while I was still working.  I struggle with clutter but enjoy using what is there.  My study has been recaptured as My Space, the kind of retreat, maybe even dorm room, that I was never able to afford, though not so elaborate as to be a monument to myself.  And clutter needs to be addressed, which I am doing one small piece at a time, though with a reasonably visionary end point.

I fish less, exercise more, garden about the same.  My need for dress clothing approaches nil, mainly synagogue.  And to my surprise, and maybe to my regret, I do not really miss or seek out the pageant that absorbed my working lifetime.

Might Go, Might Not

Class of '69, first graduating class from my high school.  Fifty years approaching and undoubtedly cause for acknowledgment if not celebration.  We are highly accomplished.  I know that not so much by newspaper clippings as by a mixture of prior contacts, a small amount of keeping in touch, and a large amount of Facebook where many of us reconvened about eight years ago and largely plateaued, though I did add my first new HS acquaintance in a while not too long ago. 

For me HS was my fate.  I did not choose it.  My parents purchased a house and people who ran the school district apportioned which street's residents went to which school.  I liked the people and the teachers, clearly derived benefit from having been there, and it enabled my destiny.  Most of the ensuing half century proved more destiny than fate, choices about college, career, marriage, family, social and religious affiliations, political leanings, where to donate a portion of my treasure and how much.  Fate never quite stopped, though.  I had my physical composition, my INTJ Myers-Briggs assessment, those calls from the Dean of Discipline who programmed his office phone to speed-dial my office.  But for the most part my decisions directed my future, which turned out rather well overall.  That nebish from HS could direct his intellect and ambition in a purposeful way.

That did not happen for everyone.  Some I might say peaked fifty years ago, never separated, and plodding along not that differently from Arthur Miller's Bif who coulda been somebody had not somebody in high school done him wrong.  Death of a Salesman was a mandatory title in part so we would not have the same outcome as Bif.

Most do not live in the county of our youth, abandoned long ago for college or career or to escape the Hasidim who moved in.  But for a lot, those were their peak years.  For me my best times have usually been best defined as Right Now. 

People put together a lot of effort for a celebration.  With two months to party time, I need to make a decision.  I'm not indifferent.  I am ambivalent.