On a flight last week, I struck up a conversation with a woman and her husband sitting next to me. They were retired physicians, she a pediatrician at the university and he the chief of radiology at a big Denver hospital. We were both returning from visiting kids and grandkids. She asked how I liked retirement, and I said I enjoyed having time to write a book, but mostly I was just happy to be able to pull weeds out of flowers each morning without worrying about the clock.

She was bemused, even aghast.  They’d moved into a big downtown high rise condo precisely so they didn’t have to worry about a yard, especially since they were spending retirement traveling. In fact, they’d just be in Denver for a couple days before taking off for a ten day bicycling tour in Austria, the third such European cycling tour they’d done. She recounted their other travels, though I lost track somewhere between Thailand and the Galapagos.

For hardly the first or fifth time, I felt like I was failing retirement. My one-year anniversary was July 1, and I have no big journeys to recount, no significant accomplishments, no next calling, no momentous volunteering. At times I feel a little ashamed. It seems that some many retired friends—not to mention retired strangers—are doing Meaningful Things, while I’m puttering around writing letters, reading books, and pulling dandelions. There’s the nagging feeling I’m derelict.

I’m warned, “One day you’ll be too old and sick, and then you’ll regret wasting your early retirement.” Maybe. And maybe there’s something wrong with me, some lack of imagination or late life ambition. I certainly had plenty of the latter until the day I retired, always in pursuit of something, often professional leadership roles, so it’s been wonderful not worrying about writing reports, balancing budgets, or worrying about struggling colleagues. Maybe I’ve become Odysseus among the Lotus Eaters.

I think of my father’s retirement. He stepped off the garbage truck where he’d worked 25 years, the last of his many jobs and small businesses. His knees and hips were shot, and he was relieved not to have to worry about paying fuel bills, working through the flu or snow drifts, or losing a contract. No one ever asked Dad what meaningful things he planned to do next. His trips consisted mostly of putting his flatbottom boat into the Wapsi or Cedar Rivers to go catfishing with Ray Cole or John Camp. Big journeys were visiting kids and grandkids in Georgia and Texas, seeing school events in Iowa and Illinois. 

I regret never asking Mom and Dad if they were satisfied in retirement. I’d like to have asked if wish they done things differently. I know what they’d have told me. I don’t know if that would have been accurate.

It’s perhaps an occupational hazard of a certain professional class—including professors, whom I know best—to have goals in retirement. Mind you, I have the goal of making closer friends, which turns out to be pretty challenging, despite best intentions. The friends I’ve made over the years have all moved away at various points—or I left them—and starting over, virtually, at age 68 takes more wherewithal and less introversion than I can easily muster. I spend embarrassing amounts of time screwing up the courage to make a phone call or a plan.

I thought the independence of retirement would feel different, but I find a new dependence on satisfying expectations, anticipation future regrets that, in fact, may never come, all the while figuring that others are doing things better and doing things the way I should. Meanwhile, I buy postage stamps and pull hoses and sift archives. 

The American Bicentennial  happened the summer I turned 20. That July 4th I ran a 10K race in Clinton, Iowa. Riverboat Days. I was in good shape, but I hadn’t planned well, especially for a hot morning. I’d gone by myself. Fortunately, Dr. Ash was running the race, and some of his family saw me after and shared cold drinks. That afternoon, Hazel Tech took me to a nursing home in Davenport, where she played piano and I sang a few patriotic songs. Mrs. Tech, my best friend Vance’s mom, was the church choir director at Grace Lutheran DeWitt, and she was the first person to encourage me to sing.

On the Fourth of July, 2025, the American President announced he’ll celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday next year by holding a UFC Fight on the grounds of the White House. Maybe this will be in conjunction with the reality TV show he’s mused about, the one where longtime residents with jobs and kids and hardworking dreams are made to compete with each other to avoid deportation through Alligator Auschwitz. For our entertainment.

I don’t remember, but I highly doubt my heart’s desire July 4, 1976, was to sing “America the Beautiful” for incontinent geriatrics on a hot afternoon. I did partly because, as someone who grew up as a “good boy,” something I repeatedly heard my whole life, I figured it was a good thing to do. But I’m sure I did so partly because I hadn’t planned ahead, didn’t have a more desirable option, having simply wandered into the holiday as I’ve wandered into retirement. 

Clearly America has wandered profound since that day. I’ve been joining protests and writing to politicians, but without method—and certainly without effect, as yesterday’s vote for stupid cruelty revealed. My single consolation is that a clear majority of Americans—whether by polling or by representation—don’t want this. That’s small solace when North Dakota has the same number of United States of America Senators as does California. But I have to believe that most Americans, however gerrymandered into idiocy, have a stronger, historical vision on our democracy than the selfish despots some have elected. Probably the most meaningful “project” for retirement will be to figure how best to spend waning energies and talents to counteract the greedy decline that Republicans under Dear Leader have charted.