Retirement, or What's it All About?

On the 17th of December, 2010, I will have been retired for exactly one year. And sometimes, I still feel like I'm on vacation. Like when the holiday is over, I will be back in the classroom, writing lesson plans and IEPs and doing all sorts of inane paperwork that has little to do with the actual act of teaching. Sometimes, when I feel that way, I begin to feel a bit of anxiety - okay, more than a bit. More like panic, with an accompanying increase in heart rate and shallow breathing and even a little extra perspiration in the perspiring parts.

Sometimes, I feel something else entirely, and I'm not at all sure how to describe it. As if the past 33+ years really didn't matter much at all. As if I tried much too hard to make it mean more than it actually did.

Apparently retired teachers remain in the parish school board email system. I guess it's an easy way to communicate information to us, but, to tell you the truth, there doesn't seem to be much to communicate to retired teachers. Too often, it seems, my school email is used to inform me of funeral arrangements for other retired teachers. Rather disturbing to think there is nothing to report between the retiring and the dying.

Occasionally, I receive email that should have been sent to someone else, an 'active' teacher, who has the same last name and first initial. I log in just to forward it on to her as an act of courtesy.

I think one day I'm gonna have to send an email right back to them, address it to everyone in the school system, just to let them know that what they're doing is not really life. Life is what goes on out here when they aren't playing school.

And I'm gonna tell them I'm not dead. In fact, I'm only beginning to feel alive.