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Dear Grumpy Aging Baby Boomer Youth (G.A.B.B.Y), By Alisa Singer

Dear Grumpy Aging Boomer: I’m 55 years old and thinking about retiring soon from my teaching job.  After three long decades of bratty, bored kids, unappreciative, complaining parents, miserly salaries and out of touch and indifferent administrators, I’m so ready to be done, but I keep hearing about people starting new, exciting careers after finishing the old ones. The truth is, I have no idea of anything else I’d like to do. I’ve worked long and hard for 30 years and think I’ve earned the right to do absolutely nothing.  But these stories about people recreating themselves are making me feel guilty.  What do you think - do I really need to put on my list of New Year’s resolutions: lose ten pounds and reinvent myself?

Signed, Pooped

 Dear Pooped:

Well, since I don’t know you I can’t say for sure if ten pounds is enough, but as for reinventing yourself, yes, that’s exactly what you’re expected to do. You should feel free, of course, to take a very brief intermission following the end of your first career.  But after that the audience (I refer, of course, to family, friends and anyone whose opinion you value) will fully anticipate you to re-emerge onstage with an exciting and meaningful second act performance.

It doesn’t matter how long and hard you struggled in your “first act”, or how successful you were, because as we all know, if the second act’s a dud the whole play’s a bomb. So unless you are willing to suffer the disdain of all you know, you’d better surrender your fond dreams of a future spent watching Seinfeld reruns, enjoying early bird dinner discounts and dodging your kids’ requests to babysit, and instead convert some frivolous hobby or pastime (i.e., your true passion) into meaningful committed work.

You see, just as the feminist movement succeeded in making stay-at-home-mothers feel inadequate, the “bonus years” that boomers supposedly get (because fifty is the new forty) translate into a whole new set of pressures designed to make the stay-at-home retiree also feel like a failure. Words like “reinvention” and “giving back” are all code for “get off the couch, and start trying to impress people again”. Even a doctor’s note indicating a terminal illness will not be considered an acceptable excuse.  (Reference the “Bucket List” where Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson felt compelled to complete a lengthy to-do list of frightening and uncomfortable adventures even though they had less than a year to live.)

Now let me be clear about a few things, Pooped. As far as “giving back” is concerned, a few hours a week shelving books at your local library or volunteering at the community hospital isn’t going to cut it.  In fact, anything short of single-handedly educating the female population of a small country or creating a new global food bank won’t even justify a line item on your new resume. And as for concerns about inadequate pay, no problem, you probably won’t get anyata ll.  Nor should you, considering all the psychic rewards you’ll be receiving (not to mention the psychic medical and dental benefits).

But take heart. You’re about to discover that your career opportunities did not end with your last job. Far from it, because these new challenges will create new and different opportunities to fail which will surpass anything you’ve experienced over the last 30 years. You see this time you will be expected to succeed in a completely new venture without the benefit of education, training or youthful energy. And you will be delighted to learn that your new bosses and co-workers, tikes only slightly younger than your own children, will consider you (and your decades of experience) about as welcome and relevant as smoking in airplanes and instant coffee.

But not to worry, just let your true passion for your work carry you through. And if you’re not sure what that might be I can tell you that many people at your time of life take up teaching. Maybe that’s something you can consider.

Good luck with that, G.A.B.B.Y.

About The Author

Learn More About Alisa Singer