Today I had a jarring experience. I came home feeling sad about retiring. This is not how I have been feeling typically. I usually come home and look at my countdown app, assuring myself this working gig is indeed going to end!
There are two Transition Coordinators in the school district and I have one of those jobs. ( I just edited: and I am one of them. I just realized that is what’s this is about.). The other Transition Coordinator and I met with our boss, to discuss the hiring process, and what we believe we bring to the job, to the profession. I felt like I was talking about me in the past tense. Many days it’s great to be leaving as I am so looking forward to being retired. Today I had the jolt of realizing I am leaving a fair amount of my definition of me. So maybe this is part of the separation process: from “I am one of the two Transition Coordinators in the district” to “I have a job as one of the two Transition Coordinators in the district.” Hear the difference?
Just as I understand my co-workers will start detaching from me, perhaps I need to start detaching from “I am a Transition Coordinator”. While continuing to do my job. I am still relevant, no, what I do for/with students, families and staff is still relevant. I am always relevant. So, there it is. I am scared of not being relevant.
I told my boss today it is wonderful to be able to retire while I still like my job. But I am realizing that liking my job means there are many aspects of it I will miss. I have been the Transition Coordinator for sixteen years. In the last few years I have enjoyed feeling a greater level of competence and confidence in my work. This is pretty gratifying. I have worked in the same building and with some of the same staff, for twenty years. A couple of decades is a long time, and a lot of relationships are work-related only, that I do not anticipate moving into friendships. Those relationships will be ending. Which is fine, as I don’t want a huge amount of people to maintain friendships! It just part of a huge life change that caught up with me today.
Lorna's Meanderings 
My experience was so different! For the entire last year of work, and several months before that, I longed to be home. I was fortunate to have a long time of training my replacement which provided opportunities to think about what’s effective and what made me good at my job. Passing on the wisdom brought me to a place of readiness to leave. I didn’t have the length of time or the professional status, but the field is changing and that is both interesting and exhausting. The relationships with coworkers was less difficult to leave than the relationships with the clients and families because I have to stop those communications.
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What you don’t know is that yesterday was an exception to what I am usually feeling about retiring. I understand they will hire my replacement while I am still around, so I hope to get an experience similar to yours; to pass on my wisdom.
And I appreciate your observation that ending your relationships with clients and families being harder than the co-workers. I hope you will have opportunities to bump into a few of them in time.
I am pretty excited to be home too! I think my response yesterday was a part of this grieving of an identity I have had for 37 years. I am thinking I will be fine, once I leave the job.
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Retiring is a huge change, and it is good that you are looking towards it with optimism…most of the time! You are bound to have misgivings because you identify with the work that you do, but it is also part of the pleasure of retirement to be able to reinvent yourself. I had similar mixed emotions when I retired, and it took a while to see myself as someone other than the person I had been. Now I realize that I am adding to my life’s experiences, not taking away from them.
Thanks for following Snowbird of Paradise. I hope that you keep writing about your experience as you continue to transition into your retirement.
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Thanks for your encouraging words and your perspective on the other side of retirement. I plan to keep on writing!
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