"Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap."
"I need to retire from retirement."
I find myself this morning viewing the future in terms of immediate, mid-horizon, and long term.
In the next little bit, I need to prep this place for our departure today. We're leaving one way or another, with the question being whether we'll fly five hours or drive nineteen. There's a tantalizing glimmer of sunshine out there, and temperatures are already above freezing. That said, the next arctic blast is scheduled to arrive a little after dark today, and so we need to get lucky both with regard to Peg's work schedule and the timing of the gale's arrival to avoid either driving or ingesting our seat cushions with terror somewhere over Pennsylvania when the Columbia crusts over with ice.
But that's a fast-forward to the midrange future. For now I need to start assembling whatever's heading south, get the cat carrier out of the basement, make sure the cats are in the house and fed early so they'll relieve themselves somewhere besides the cat carrier inflight, clean out the cat box after they're done, and do some laundry. I also need to go to Wegman's to pick up a little coffee, shelf-stable milk, and distilled water so we'll have coffee when we get back here, and I'd like to shoehorn a trip through the weight room before my first call.
Oh yeah, work. Today I have a call with an expert, a partner's meeting at lunch, and some fairly benign drafting to do. I've cleared the decks starting mid-afternoon, so if Peg slips out a little early (highly unlikely) we can get further ahead of the weather.
If we fly, the headwinds are hellacious and we'll end up stopping for gas in Columbia, SC after about 3.4 hours in the air. From there it's a little over two hours to Panama. Like I said, we've leaning into 45 knot headwinds most of the way, which adds about an hour to the trip.
If we drive, we just need to pick a place to sleep four or five hours into the drive. Google tells me that lands us somewhere between Hagerstown, MD and Harrisonburg, VA. A very long way from Florida, making for maybe another day-and-a-half in the car, depending on how P's hips hold out.
Either way, we're home this weekend, and excited to wake up to the bay and warmer temps (although it sounds like this weekend may break some records for low temps in the panhandle), and to spend a little time at the farm next weekend. I think we've missed Wyldswood most of all.
Telescoping out a little further, this essay in the ABA Journal caught my attention, discussing lawyers struggling to retire:
Not sure if that link will work, and it may be behind a paywall.
The gist of the article isn't so much about lawyers not being able to pay for retirement, which may be an issue for some but doesn't have to be if you've worked and saved a little, so much as lawyers not knowing what to do with themselves once their professional identity is stripped away. A lot of firms also struggle with the lack of an accession and retirement plan for partners, leaving the law firm with zombie partners who won't leave but who aren't shouldering the laboring oar as they should. Sometimes the partnership agreement only provides for a unanimous partner vote to expel the should-be-retired partner, but we lawyers hate conflict, ironically, so that rarely happens.
In my case, I'm expecting to slow down at some point. I thought it might coincide with turning sixty, but my associate's unexpected departure means that rather than 2024 being a more relaxed pace, it's going to be a marathon run as a sprint, more something for a forty-year-old than this tired old fart. Still, at some point all that will change, maybe around the time I'm done paying my ransom from the first thirty-something years of my working life, and I really will work half-time or less, stay home, cook a little more, and love on Peggy more than these work-filled days that often stretch well into the evening. (paraphrasing Hank Williams, Jr., in his classic lament of growing old, written when he was maybe forty, entitled "All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down").
Besides lawyers losing themselves by retiring, there's a common line one hears among old lawyers that I don't recall hearing in any other profession. When asked when or if they/we plan to retire, attorneys will often answer, "I have to keep coming to work. If I quit, I'd just sit home and drink myself to death."
Why is that? I get the impression from P that the medical community is okay with calling it quits at some point, and just knowing when it's time. Lawyers seem not to be able to do that. I know a couple who've always been great guys who are living what sounds like their best lives in their 70s, cycling and visiting grandkids and fishing whenever the mood strikes them. I can think of many more whose funerals I've attended over the years, who were staggering down Beach Drive every evening or slurring some trenchant observation at an Inn of Court meeting after they'd hung up their cleats.
So I suppose I'll always work some, although I can't get out of trial work soon enough. Unlike the firms discussed in the above article, ours has a pretty carefully thought-out transition plan if one reaches retirement age and is ready to move on to the next thing. At the same time, there are some fairly draconian financial consequences for leaving early, which is yet another reason for me to stay at it for a little while longer.
Time to scramble into that short-term horizon. Lots to do, whether the day ends in the cockpit or the car.
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