Werk?

I think I'm really getting used to this not-working thing.

When I took the year off after leaving EDS, I wondered how long it would take before I didn't automatically think of myself as a programmer. After all, I'd been doing it for 22 years -- surely I would still reflexively think of myself that way, feel that I needed to do that in order to 'identfy' myself. I was surprised, then, to find that after six months, that identity was essentially gone. Granted, there were distractions during that period -- my mother'd hurt herself, we were having the kitchen remodeled and the nook extension built -- but still, it came as a bit of a surprise. I'd always heard that one of the biggest problems with retirement, or even just not working, was loss of identity. In my case, it seemed as easy as taking off a jacket. I didn't have a different one to put on, but that seemed minor.

When I was summarily ejected from IBM, I expected much of the same. Although I didn't identify with IBM as much as I did with EDS (six years versus twenty two), I still thought of myself as a techie, and the loss of that identification would, I figured, resonate with me. I still perk up, after all, when I hear my wife on a teleconference, talking about a system upgrade or a problem they're having. Don't get me wrong, I never was a great tech -- my strength was persistence, not knowledge -- but I enjoyed it, and I figured I would miss it. As it turns out, what I missed was earning money, and, actually, not all that much. We both have retirement plans, and we have a goodly amount saved, so as long as we continue to meet daily expenses out of daily income, we're cool. I'd like to earn money, I'm just not particularly willing to go enter into someone else's work environment to do it.

Even the most casual opportunities seem to stimulate the feeling of 'work? me?' in my psyche. I read in a local paper of a local 'high tech' company that was hiring retirees who were willing to work part time. Gee, I thought, I didn't know we had high-tech companies in the local town. Well, its high-tech only by comparison to, say, Burger King; the kind of thing that fifteen years ago would have been pretty amazing (You work in computers? Wow!) but now is pretty mundane. And what I found, in thinking about it, was 'well, heck, if they aren't really doing big machine stuff, I don't want to be bothered'. It took me a while to realize that I could have substituted anything into that qualification. No particular job really excites me. Thats not to say that there aren't jobs that sound interesting, and even ones that I'd apply for, but the truth seems to be that if I never work again, that would be okay, too.

It reminds me of a story I heard years ago from a fellow who runs a major employment agency - Challenger, Gray - saying that he was doing outplacement testing of an accountant who'd been laid off as part of a restructuring. Gee, he said, surprised, your scores for numerical aptitude aren't all that high. Well, the guy replied, maybe thats why I never liked being an accountant.

Whatever happened to thirty or so years of work ethic? Did I make a mistake, thirty years ago?