So what’s it like in retirement? Let me tell you. Every night is Friday night. And every day is Saturday. And that does not get old. I feel a bit of glee every night as I get into bed that tomorrow is mine, all mine.

Not having status is a source of both pain and comfort. The more painful part of status loss was when I transitioned from academia back to industry. Teaching and research as a tenured professor was (to me) hard-earned status. It wasn’t just being a professor (though that still sounds cool to me), but who my colleagues were: they were intellectually curious people devoted to the same calling of contributing to and disseminating knowledge. Not that people in industry are not just as smart, or that their impact on the world isn’t as great or greater, or that with enough effort one cannot bridge the two worlds. I just have romantic notions about academia because of its focus on education and discovery. Being able to teach and mentor people at the point when they are most adventurous about learning is a kick. OK, and the luxury of having an office and freely talking about one’s work. Another factor is that in academia I was me. At Facebook/Meta, I was Facebook/Meta.

The comfort part of not having status comes from the discomfort I felt with recognition. Of course I feel proud about the few awards and well-cited papers (I also treasure some not-as-well-cited ones), but being called out made me squirm. I didn’t like my photo taken. I didn’t like to dress in a way that people would notice, or remark on. I’d be happy if some things I created were to linger on after I go: the science, if still relevant, maybe even some of the crappy art (realistically it would need to get less crappy for that), as long as people get something out of them. If not, then also fine.

Beyond comfort, being a nobody frees me up to do things that would make a person of status lose face. I can write self-deprecating books about my remodeling mistakes, or, for example, this silly blog post. Once, when I was about to give a keynote talk at a conference, the person introducing me rattled off the children’s books I had self-published, including “The princess who had to go #2”. I turned red. When a friend was giving me feedback on a chapter book I was intending to self-publish some eight years back, he asked “Are you sure you want your name on this?” But that is only bad if my name means something. I remember a researcher of social media (and I forgot who, apologies) saying that they interviewed older adults, who were significantly more likely to share misinformation online, why they did so. You’d think that maybe they lacked internet literacy, or were for some other reason unable to discern fact from fiction. But it turned out that they often knew they were sharing misinformation, they just didn’t care. If you’re already outside of the workforce, and are not jeopardizing your hiring prospects, then what is the downside? I’m starting to understand how they feel. 

Even though my status earlier was not that significant, I felt above some things, because I was a busy person. Often, but not always, I would bike past some obstruction in the bike lane, thinking someone else would take care of it. Now I stop and take care of it more often. I went back to cleaning the house myself. Many years ago I had received the sage advice to hire cleaners rather than argue endlessly about whose turn it was to clean this or that. And it did nicely eliminate those arguments, but I always felt a bit uneasy about having someone else clean for me. I don’t enjoy doing it myself either, but I put on an audiobook or podcasts and time passes easily enough.  I had (save for at one rental where the gardening service was included) always done my own gardening because having other people kill the plants I planted (something I can do well enough myself), was infuriating. Also, I hate leaf blowers. So gardening continues. And now I garden both in California, and in Bol, Croatia, my favorite place to hang out (but not the easiest place to garden, at least not part-time!). 

I’m able to attend to projects I had put off for years. I finally scanned scouting materials my dad had held on to from the 1950s and delivered them to Croatia’s scouting organization who will now properly archive them in collaboration with the national archive. Of course I didn’t quite finish the project because I need to create a website for it. I wrote a comic book about my remodeling mistakes. I did the usual retirement things: a bunch of gardening and hiking, and took up pottery. I studied up on plants and on cooking.

I was also able to devote more time and effort to family. As I detailed in separate blogs posts, I was able to help my son compress two grades into one through remote schooling, and do mini European and US history tours with him. When my in-laws were no longer able to live independently, they came to live with us. Being there for them is nice. Not something I would sacrifice a career for, but since it was already pre-sacrificed, it was a terrific opportunity. 

One freedom I didn’t expect to enjoy as much as I do is not having to care what the uber-boss thinks. Since Zuck is the ultimate decision-maker at Meta, his thinking matters if you work there (arguably also if you don’t, but to a lesser extent). I also enjoy not being part of a  corporation: the extra pang of stress when it gets mentioned in the news, the inevitable second question you get asked when getting to know any other human (“Where do you work?”), the coolaid that I drank that wasn’t strong enough. 

I do miss collaborating with brilliant colleagues. Theoretically I have a little paper collaboration in progress, but I need to get on it! Collaborations and situations did push me to achieve things that looking back now, I can hardly believe I was doing. Without pressures and deadlines and expectations, do I have the self-discipline, the ability to do anything much?

On that note, one thing that has been seriously frustrating is how slippery time is. My mom joked that never was she so busy as in retirement, and I have to say this is true. Somehow it is possible to have nothing scheduled and yet not have enough time for anything, especially not serious projects. Pushing out the comic book or processing the scouting materials was only possible due to semi-self-imposed deadlines that had me working non-stop for a while. If anyone gets anything done one to two hours a day at a time, I want to know their secret (shut up, Darwin). 

Still, whenever I feel unproductive, maybe only getting an hour’s work done on a project in a day, I remind myself that at least I am not in meetings all day. Instantly I feel more productive.  

Another hidden bonus is not having to care as much about longevity. Wanting to have some good years of enjoyment after one retires is reasonable. But denying oneself culinary pleasures, spending many hours on various checkups, not to mention the effort (and opportunity cost) of a fitness regimen, is trading enjoyment now for a longer but potentially more limited life later, maybe one hampered by arthritis, or cancer treatment, less stretchy bladder etc. Already I find myself less adventurous than I used to be. This is a long way of saying, by enjoying life now, I don’t have to “work” as much on making sure I can enjoy it later.

I do feel shame for giving up, and maybe I don’t reach out as much to (OK, maybe I actually avoid) people who knew me professionally. When fellow classmates from Caltech, friends who attended MIT or Stanford, etc. left the workforce, I hadn’t understood it. Why would they ever leave exciting careers in science, etc.? When new moms hit pause on their careers to be home with kids, while I went back to work two months after my son’s birth (that’s when the semester started), I felt a disconnect with those other moms. So now I shy away from old professional contacts, in case they might think like I used to. Serves me right!

I wish I was still modeling the strong, successful professional for my son. On the other hand I’ve had more time to work on projects with him, like taking Andrew Ng’s machine learning Coursera sequence in parallel with him, and then working on a “critter”-identification neural network that checks a wildlife camera we have set up in our yard and auto-ids which critter was captured. That was really fun. Because it involved quite a bit of time to re-tool myself, I’m not sure I would have had the time to do this if I was still working. And maybe showing that it is reasonable to opt out of stress is a good thing to model as well? Maybe.

Will I look back on life and think it was a life well-lived? As I see it, that is deathbed-Lada’s problem, just like Seinfeld’s night-guy screws over morning-guy by staying up late, and there is nothing morning-guy can do. Why is that one moment, the deathbed, so important? Why should I care what that old person thinks even if she is future-me. I think it is because we humans are storytellers, and I think we want to be able to tell a good story, to ourselves and others. Is mine a good story? It was good for a long while. I was really lucky professionally for so many years, met and worked with people I admire greatly, did work I am proud of. But the “professional” story slows down right around now. Speaking of slow, I think I will wander outside now and watch the bees for a bit. Catch ya later.

What retirement is like for me