I’m only semi-retiring; I’m leaving the main part of my job, but turning the research secondment into a new part-time contract. The technicalities are one thing: fill in the appropriate forms for receiving your pension. Decide what to do about outstanding holiday entitlement. Set things in motion for a new contract. Wait. Start counting the weeks, and then the days. Wait some more.
As I said in an earlier post, you can try to inject a few fun things into lunch-breaks, to brighten up the days. (I’m grateful to work in a place where there are loads of performances going on.) Meanwhile, you’re still at work in the old job. You know, and everyone else knows, that in a couple of months you won’t be there. In my unrealistic mind, I’d hoped to go out in a blaze of glory, but I don’t feel glorious or triumphant at all. How are you supposed to FEEL?, I asked a considerably older friend. They looked at me in a way that said they’d never asked themselves that!
Clearing Clutter (and Treasures)
I sit cataloguing donations and glumly eyeing piles that everyone would like to be cleared out of the way before I clear off! A late night email (which I found the next day) seemed to hint at that. But if I haven’t cleared the piles of donations by now, working steadily, then am I reasonably going to get the whole lot out of the way in two months? Am I not working hard enough? It’s a bit depressing, actually. On the other hand, when I arrived in 1988, there was a half a rolling stack full of donated materials. I used to wonder if I’d still be needed once I’d catalogued them all. Of course, they were all dealt with decades ago. None of our donations are remotely that old; there aren’t nearly as many; and no, I wasn’t discarded when the original donations were all done and dusted! Maybe it’s unrealistic to expect a final, purging blitz on what’s there now. Leave something for my successors.
Occasionally I get over-excited about treasures that crop up amongst the more routine stuff. (Over 200 years old? How could I NOT be excited?! One of the joys of having two parallel careers is having research knowledge that illuminates historical library materials. Sharing that knowledge sufficiently so that everyone else is aware of the treasures – that’s another thing entirely. Who wants to be trapped by an old librarian keen to share stories about ancient scores and famous poets?)
The Paranoia about Becoming Irrelevant – ‘Yesterday’s News?’
I’ve been keeping a ‘handover document’ for almost a year now, and every so often I think of something to add to it. Often things occur to me after I’ve had to deal with something, and realise that maybe it needs noting down! ‘It won’t be your concern in a few weeks’, my older spouse tells me. It’s hard adjusting to the certainty that things will be done differently once I’m gone. Things that I think should be done one way, will assuredly be done differently, and that’s to be expected. Even the things that I value aren’t necessarily of the same value to other folk – that’s the hard bit! (Mind you, some of the things I value have historical AND monetary value. My valued things aren’t valued without good reason.)
On the plus side, of course, is my list of research things to investigate, calls for papers and articles and chapters. I haven’t run out of steam, intellectually – far from it. My second book about to commence the copy-editing process. A research paper to write for a conference in July. New adventures on the horizon – oh, I really can’t wait for some new adventures! (I’m not a dull cataloguer – I’ve just ended up backed into a wee cataloguing corner. Neither does everyone find cataloguing tedious, but I have really done too much of it!)
You get lots of advice about how to write a CV, how to start your career with a flourish, how to make your mark. How to get on in the world. How to progress. But it seems there’s little advice about how to gracefully bow out!
This isn’t something unique to me – retirals happen all the time. What do other people do? Do you set up appointments to say goodbye to people? (Hard, when I’ll still be around, albeit in a different department.) Do you try to set up one last workshop/seminar/whatever before you go? [Post Script: you don’t!]
Or just try to be inconspicuous until the Last Day arrives?!
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 