Almost the first phrase that people greet you with when they first meet you is “What do you do?”. Your answer and vocation will in most cases slot you into a category for them, and yield a predefined level of respect and associated attitude toward you. Breaking out of that box once it is assigned to you is often not easy. As such, your initial presentation, irrespective of who you really are or your value, is important. That may be unfortunate and sound superficial, but it is often simple reality in our society. For many people with career and/or professional employment, this plays in their favour.

But what about when you retire? You are not ‘that’ any more. You may be in the process of becoming something else, but since the something else may not have significant monetary value presently it is of little social value in the eyes of many others. What do you do, and how do you adjust?

One strategy is to say you are whateveryouwere-retired. If your previous vocational title had some sort of medical, academic, military or similar status, then you likely can carry that on, garnering whatever social usefulness or advantage it might have. And don’t be fooled, it usually has quite a bit. Position is a tool that will gain advantage or preferential treatment. If that aura of position remains intact in some form, people will most likely treat you as if you were still in the position or close to it. This likely also applies to any person who has had a socially recognized professional designation of some type (eg. engineers, chartered accountants, etc.)

On the other hand, simply ‘retired’ doesn’t cut it in the redeeming social value category. The only exception is in the eyes of those who are drawing close to (or wish they were drawing close to) retirement themselves. If you are well retired financially and health wise, this often accrues great amounts of envy and a certainly related status. Outside of these exceptions, the retired person is viewed by many as doing nothing, and therefor of having no status. This is true even if they are pursuing interesting avenues for themselves. The fact that they are not using whatever skills they have to make money or accrue status of some sort is often viewed as almost unethical.

All this is an interesting backdrop for those who are contemplating retirement or some sort of self-directed period of leave without a finite end date. It says a lot about what modern society values (activities which have income as a goal) and what it does not value (activities for which the primary goal is not income), irrespective of what altruistic words may be offered.

Christian certainly face this directly in contemplating a retirement or extended leave period in which to seek and follow the leading of the Lord. Successfully growing past this hurdle to follow the direction of the Lord, even possibly allowing oneself to “not seek gainful activity” and allow life or direction to unfold, effectively thumbs the nose that the whole societal affair. But from the reports of those treading it, this road has more potholes than one might think.

A Christian brother took early retirement just over a year ago. With a timely set of skills, he went on to establish an relaxed and effective consulting practice which brought satisfaction and remuneration without most of the previous organizational grief. After a year, however, he related that he had finally realized that he was still performing the same old same’old. He had gone back to a form of work based upon programmed expectations. He had not been able to, in fact had not even seen the possibility to, allow himself to simply let things unfold without creating them. Even thought and research into identifying and using his gifts had still fallen into his pre-programming until he realized what was actually going on. With that humongous hurdle at least partially understood, he could finally see meaning in giving himself permission to stop striving in the old way and possibly allow a new direction to emerge. Doing that, however, involved both seeing through and stepping back from a lifelong socially accepted paradigm that also had great emotional value as a undercurrent.

Bravo!!! I applaud his bold realization and his desire to look beyond the world to the Lord’s direction. And more than that, the realization (instructive for us all) of the requirement to stop one paradigm in order to be able to see other possibilities – realizing that without stopping the other possibilities can not appear.

T’would that we all can do precisely that in due time, allowing the space for a new direction  to unfold, irrespective of the expectations of others, the world, and most significantly, ourselves…

Did you ever notice that well meaning people can sometimes be a pain the rear end?

In our last installment about pretending to be from a profession that no-one would likely harass you for free advice about, it was out pointed out that many people consider professionals of various sorts to be sources of free advice and counselling. They assume that all you want to talk about is work and you just can’t wait to hear about thier issues. You often can’t get them to stop without being rude, literally. You are then considered as unfeeling and unfriendly. Go figure.

Well, having been bugged this way AGAIN here is the rant…

Before COVID, I used to go swimming to exercise and to unwind. At the end of the pool between sprints or in the shower at the end, the last thing I want to do is talk about work in any form, particularly about the ills of my particular institution (which are legion) or to dispense free IT advice on someone’s latest problems or point of interest. But it seems one can’t politely escape!

A great workout, nice and relaxed, then 30 minutes of fending of some guy who has nothing better to do that ask me questions that require analysis and discussion. ARGH!!!

Maybe a T shirt that says “Don’t talk to me about work!”. On the other hand that wouldn’t do much good in the shower.

I need a body guard!

PS. No offense to you Florists.

This Post could also have been titled “I don’t do Windows!”.

Computer professionals (especially those on the technical side of the business) have something in common with doctors, central bankers, and a number of other professions. What they have in common is that many people who they meet from outside their vocation will have an uncontrollable desire to present their personal problems related to the other person’s vocation for solution, convinced that solving their problems for them is a privilege in any setting. Moreover, they feel that working on their behalf for free should be your privilege.

In the case of IT people this manifests in a senario such as: You are introduced to someone in a social setting, and they learn in the course of things that you are an IT technical person. They then seem compulsively driven to share with you the latest problem with their Windows Operating System. The problem is presented with the zeal of someone who believes that you have no other desire but to share you professional skill with them without limit, on the spot, and who thinks all IT people are experts in the Windows Desktop.

Further, once they know this about you, all subsequent meetings will be overtaken by further requests for assistance, or lengthy descriptions of one problem or another.

Lawrence Greenspan, the long past Governor of the US Central Bank (arguably the most powerful man in the US), once said that, after having been accosted at social gatherings endlessly with financial questions once people learned what he did for a living, he was subsequently going to tell people that he was a Florist, in hopes that they didn’t need a floral arrangement as much as they needed financial advice.

In the discussions that are being described there is no room for you, the person. There is really no discussion or fellowship at all. The only thing on the front burner is the other person’s problem or information. They will tenaciously resist any diversion in the interaction. You don’t really exist in the equation as a person. Why would anyone seek out this sort of interaction? Most of us would not.

We are usually too polite to state the truth – If we want to work we will go to the office!

If you counter that you don’t know much about that particular system, you are as often as not relegated to the incompetency pile for not providing free consulting advice. That you might have a life, and want to actually discuss something more meaningful than work, is beyond comprehension of the self-absorbed.

One fellow I knew at a church would accost me every Sunday after service, to ‘share’ with me his latest Windows exploits or problems. Talk about spoiling the moment. To say I took to avoiding him would be polite.

Now, all this is not to say that there are not areas of IT that I might be experimenting with and interested in chatting about, but that is a completely different scenario. It also does not mean that in some instances I do not happily provide IT support. Again, different.
In the final analysis it is sad, and it is a situation we should all bear in mind when chatting with those in other areas of endeavour. They might like to actually converse about life!

On the other hand, “I am a Florist” sounds like a good approach to me. Thank you Mr. Greenspan.