This is more or less the nine month anniversary of my retirement. Enough time for a baby to gestate and be born should be enough time to at least have some ability to examine the outcomes of an action. However I’m going to keep this very general and not focus on financial specifics.
The biggest change other than the retirement itself is that we have moved closer to family and into a more urban environment. Both have been positive changes. The new house means that more money is tied up in housing but the old house sold well and fast and we’ve switched to having only one vehical so the difference isn’t that huge on a month to month basis.
During the first nine months I hit a new lower weight goal and have maintained it. I haven’t exercised as much as I might like but I don’t feel too bad about it. My long term health issues are more or less unchanged although it is clear that I’m drinking less beer in retirement which is a good thing.
The negative thing would be that I am not doing as much directly related to my existing hobbies. Some of that is due to things such as selling one house, buying another and general readjustment after coming back to a situation that I knew was temporary. But the move is over and I should be moving closer to a permanent situation.
I have started to set things up to start working with wood and electronics in the way I have wanted to for years but I haven’t moved as fast as I would like. Instead I have procrastinated with research on new hobbies and falling back into my lifelong hobbies of consuming books and video games. Research, planning, reading, and general learning are things that I love doing. I don’t beat myself up over doing more of the things I enjoy. But I also enjoy making things and I need to make sure that I move towards making things and using the materials I have collected. even in the face of my doubts.I need to remember to include the artistic play in my retirement routine.
How had I not heard of this Latin word for leisure both idle and productive?
I am prone to otium otiosum at times; unoccupied or idle leisure that might be thought of as wasted time. Much of my reading, video game playing, and social media falls under that general heading even if I am a fairly strong believer in the idea that time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. I strive for otium negotiosum, the busy leisure of hobbies, managing your affairs well, and such activities, but I don’t always reach it. I’ll let the readers decide which form this blog is!
Like many concepts it is easy to make connections although it is unclear how deep they really are. When I first heard of the concept my thoughts went to the fact that one of the best decisions we ever made as a family was that we would do our best to make it work with only one salary. There is much work that needs to be done in a household and having one person able to do that work as their effective job freed both of us up to our affairs well. Like many choices it had risk and opportunity costs but also reduced stress and allowed both of us to have a measure of leisure (both me time and us time in more modern terms) that we would not have had.
More generally it is neat to see that the upper class Romans had a concept that maps fairly well to the idea of vanaprastha that I have mentioned before. My guess is that the Romans would have thought of retiring to a well run farm or house in the city not a forest dwelling but the idea of time for contemplation, personal development, and service seems to be similar.
Roughly nine months ago I wrote that If someone looked out into my backyard they could be excused for thinking that I have become somewhat of a literal forest hermit. Actually I dislike yard work and hadn’t gotten around to taming a yard that was left mostly untended for four years. Today I am in a different house with a different yard. It isn’t a forest although it is still not a tamed lawn. I might even be a little less of a hermit!
Forest hermit is also a literal translation of the term vanaprastha at least according to some websites. Others say “way of the forest” would be a better fit which has its own resonances with me. In either case vanaprastha is the name for the third stage of life in the Vedic asrama system. I’m not Hindu (or Taoist for that matter) but I find a lot of practical wisdom and psychology in the philosophical thought of many religions.
The asrama idea says that for those in the highest three castes there are four stages of life; student, householder, forest hermit, and renunciate. The householder stage is the focus on the duties of maintaining a household, raising a family, educating one's children, and leading an active community and family centered social life. At some point, roughly when grandchildren are born, there is a change in role to the third stage focused more on advising, personal development, and withdrawing from some aspects of the world. It sounds a lot like work life and retirement.
Nothing really new or groundbreaking in a sense but interesting because it seems to mimic the FIRE movement in the idea of consciously choosing to shift from a focus on earning wealth to a focus on other aspects of leading a meaningful life prior to the final stage of your life. Some retirement discussions would probably match this with the “go go” and later “go slow” retirement phases but I think that there is a deeper idea. Go go and go slow are descriptive but they aren’t prescriptive. The idea of a forest wanderer (another translation) is that it is prescriptive. One should move to the third stage when your own kids are launched into their own householder stage. It implies a timeframe that isn’t the fetishized early retirement in your 30s of the ERE/MMM crowd but is not holding on until as late as possible attached to earning money and maintaining one’s position in life.
An idealized version might be the mentor trope common in spy movies. Retired. Out of the game and living a good life but not so far out of things that they can’t provide advice and aid. To cast a wide net you could think of Isobel von Schönenberg in Hopscotch, Jean-Pierre in Ronin, and both Donald Fitzroy and Margaret Cahill in The Gray Man. Of course this is the flashy, action movie view but mentorship and service to the community in ways other than purely being a part of the economic machine (with a nod to the fact that we are all part of that engine due to our consumptions at the very least) seem like good goals especially when balanced with the freedom to explore personal development. But let’s not carry the trope too far as it is 50/50 whether the mentor character lives.
Perhaps due to having been a teacher I find myself drawn more to the personal development side of things. Right now mentorship feels very close to what I have stepped away from in 2022 even as some aspects of teaching still maintain their appeal. I’m not religious so perhaps my introspection and musing on the idea of a life well lived and work well done aren’t particularly in line with the ancient Vedic ideals but no matter. As one sets off into one’s own personal forest of the mind it is good to at least examine the paths laid out by others even if you figure that you might go off on a little impromptu cross country travel.