It’s been over a year since I last painted a picture. I bought new canvases this Fall thinking this would give me motivation. I maintained the space for my easel and paints in a prominent place in my living room so as to make it easy. However, I have not picked up a paint brush.
Why? It’s not like golf in New England, when we put our clubs away in the closet for winter. There isn’t a seasonal rhythm for painting, at least not for my painting.
The reason I am sharing this is because of what painting is in my life. Or at least what I tell myself it is. Painting emerged as an activity that I expected to be a source of joy that I envisioned being able to do well into my 90s. This may be true. It is also unlikely to be a replacement for the hours I spent working.
Many people have thoughts about what they will do after they end their regular job. I have visions of having a studio with multiple canvases at different stages of completion scattered about. The vision includes my meandering out to the studio and spending much of the day there. Having the idea and the equipment does not guarantee it will be enough to fill my days. The trap many people fall into is not thinking how they will need to change when the work ends to have this new vision be true. We might envision enjoying playing golf five days a week or would think we would love to provide full time childcare for our grandchildren. These might be true but how would we know?
How to break the cycle of boring job?
One way to evaluate our interest is to do the activity for a longer period of time. If currently a weekend golfer, then play three days in a row. What is that experience like? If a grandparent with childcare aspirations, take your grandkids for a full day on a weekly basis. Are you ready for more than one day in a row? As for me, the painter, what is my capacity for painting? Would painting three hours work? Doing this daily? Does my enjoyment sustain, wane or grow? We won’t know if we have never done these things.
The same thing is true if we think we could stop working cold turkey. A physician friend of mine was laid off a year ago and found life without seeing patients at least one or two days a week to be intolerable. He did not find an adequate substitute for a routine he had lived for the prior thirty years. Why would anyone think what took thirty years to develop could be replaced in weeks or even months of retirement?
The more complex the career or role the greater the challenge could be to find something that would be satisfying. The same reasons some of us did not change careers will be the same reason we fail at finding something new to do in retirement. We don’t know how to find a satisfying replacement. Without identifying the satisfying replacement, the effort to make a change is too enormous. Why go through the research, skill development, practice, and persistence if it doesn’t bring us to a different outcome than where I began? This is why people return as consultants or part-time resources to what they were doing before retirement. They already have the expertise and they have the luxury of shorter hours. This may not be equated with a “passion” or following your purpose, but it could be considered something for which you gain some pleasure, requiring work that you can enjoy, and serves the purpose of feeling useful and chewing up the hours between tee times.
The capacity any of us have to uncover satisfying alternatives comes from our experience setting our own direction and dealing with those changes. For those closing their careers in corporate America feeling bored or trapped because they couldn’t afford to do something different, these people will face the prospect of being bored with their retirement. There is another way, but it takes work and commitment. Life Coaches like myself have experienced firsthand succeeding in finding alternatives that we love. We know what it takes to find work that I love and have the tools to help those who are bored find the life that they will love. It is possible, why wait?
