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Someone all-around me may be sharing their views about “retirement” (my retirement!), which to start with I thought was obviously a trivial exercise of polite conversation.  Their point because this is a stupid word that have no real purpose.  The dialogue was quite frequent therefore i stopped being flippant about this discussion and commenced thinking deeply about “retirement” phraseology.

My first the avenue for call ended up being Roget’s Thesaurus - a reference I have found useful through the years.  Retirement cross-references include cease, quiescence, regress, recede, depart, run away, resignation, former, aging, disused seclusion, later years, have leisure.  Perhaps my buddies point had merit to it.  This just isn't me!!  The only words that have a semblance of applicability was relinquish - Let me relinquish specific roles and responsibilities - to create space for brand new ones.

The following notion that became apparent was the contemporary rebranding of retirement like “next phase”, “next act”, “second phase”.  The trouble with that is that though it generally is geared towards preserving dignity, it can be airy-fairy - it may mean anything from “sitting in your house watching TV” to performing a lot of interesting items that cannot collectively be described.  Therefore by omission of the specific title, people assume you're randomly drifting through life on a everyday basis.  I have been exposed to a lot more ‘retired” those people who are consultants - whether real or imaginary - that knows - or even in fact so what.  I have heard the concept of someone setting up a business without any real intention of doing anything - just to prevent the blank uninterested responses how the word ”retired” evokes.

Much like me in the process of facing this dilemma, my current thinking is I am going to be self-employed, i.e. work with myself.  This can include:

Educating myself around the good an up to now unspecified country
Mentoring and coaching professionals being more potent (or simply allow them to  get a thoughtful second opinion on something)
Yardwork
Not-for-profit involvement
Improve my golf, tennis, get fitter
Consult or build my own, personal business [https://penzu.com/p/8138ad78 David Pulmans profile]
Plus anything else that takes my fancy
The actual concern is not too “retired” people do not do anything - the majority are incredibly active and productive - it’s that society - or non-retired people - believe that the only real meritorious activity is always that connected with paid employment.  The only way to define someone is “what they are doing to get a living” or “what they did (before they became useless!!)” - instead of what they give rise to every day.  This needs to be interesting!!