(Written - 1/6/09)

I wonder if there is a similarity with a new born at six months and being retired six months?  For those of you with children, you may remember that at six months, everything seemed rosy. Generally the little tyke was sleeping through the night, the routines were in place, and he or she was responding to the parents, who suddenly felt they had this whole ‘baby thing’ down pat.  Ha !

Well, as I type this entry, it is exactly six months since I’ve left my five day a week job.  And I am beginning to feel I’ve got this ‘retirement thing’ down pat.  Just as I learned a lot about parenting the first six months (nowhere close to what the next 18 years would teach me),  I have a few observations based on my six months of retirement (probably only a fraction of what I have yet to learn about this new ‘status’).

Having watched and talked with a few friends who had retired, I smugly told myself that I would do it differently. I wouldn’t try to prove I was still ‘relevant’ by joining boards of organizations to pass on my wisdom, nor would I do some part time consulting to keep my foot in the water.  I would leave my job and go a different way.  But I did have sort of a plan: I would first travel and then, together with my Frost playmates, work on our Foundation to find a way to do a bit more good in the world. Ha. !

Shortly after totally leaving  Frost, I headed off to Tuscany to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary, one week with family and one week with friends and a bit of traveling in Italy. Not a bad start.  But then I returned home, and my plans changed quickly.

I decided to get my 90 year old father to move to Washington.  And suddenly I had a seven day a week job, using all my caretaking/people skills honed over the past 43 years.  It was a wonderful decision and has worked out even better than I hoped.  Looked at a different way, however,  I had done what I had smugly criticized others of doing: found a way to prove I was still relevant.

Now the constant attention to my dad has eased, and because my fellow playmates are not quite ready to dive into the Foundation work, I’ve found myself headed off in a different direction (this Millerstime.net website).

But I do have a few other observations on my retirement.  First, I am amazingly relieved that I no longer have to worry about the Frost kids, their parents, the program, the staff, the school finances, the transition to new leadership, etc.  I was able to walk away totally and not miss the work at all. It was almost too easy. But lest I overstate it, I did find myself dreaming frequently of the work and stressful dreams they were. Now, those dreams only occur once a week or so. Sunday evenings, and all other evenings, all feel like the day before a holiday. No worries about work the next day.

I’ve avoided, for the most part, becoming a house husband. One trick to that was getting an office in Dupont Circle where we’ll headquarter our Foundation, and where, in the meantime, I’m working on Millerstime.net. It’s wonderful there, an office in the old Brewmaster’s Castle, a magnificent Victorian mansion overlooking a garden. Other than playing parking roulette with the DC parking gestapo, it’s a lovely place from which to come and go, with no pressures (other than ones I place on myself).

I was talking recently with friends of 40 years about retirement. Donna had already retired, and Bob was moving closer to it. I asked him if he was ready to end his ‘life’s work,’ or the major part of it. I think I was really thinking about that myself.  And at this six month birth/retirement, I can honestly say that I am delighted to have finished my teaching/counseling/administrative work. I have some good feelings of success at co-founding, developing, and passing on to a new generation of good staff a healthy place for troubled kids and their parents to get help. But for me, enough of that work.

I’m delighted that I now have some time to be with my dad, probably take care of my daughter’s new baby one or two days a week while she finishes her internship, and explore that other direction that has always interested me - journalism and writing.  To still have a few wits about me in this age of the Internet makes it possible for me to put together a number of interests and write about them. And that Foundation direction should get going pretty soon too.

So. So far, so good. Not exactly as I had planned. But even better. 

...more to come...