So this is retirement. I’m all of three weeks into it.. I wake up each day thinking I have to do something and then realize I really dont. I keep hearing the words I would tell my patients. Harry Stack Sullivan’s quote “Industry is the Enemy of Melancholy” keeps flashing thru my mind. I do try and stay busy. I have been exercising and that does help and does give me some structure. I don’t want to get like some of the guys I saw who told me there is no difference between Monday and Thursday. There is. Not everyday is the same
I keep questioning myself and wonder if I should have stayed longer. I feel guilty about some patients who think I abandoned them. I really tried not to, but after I left I couldn’t keep in contact. I have no clinic to back me up and at this time I don’t want to do private practice. I need to step back from therapy. Then I tell myself that I deserve to do more than just see 11 or 12 patients a day and listen to their stories. What about my story? I am still thinking about it. What should I do?? Buy a motorcycle and go touring? I always dreamed of that, but I suffer from a lifelong lack of coordination and tendency to daydream—so motorcycles are really not a good idea.
What about professional wrestling? I could wear a mask and get a trick name. “El Thumpo”? Nah, probably ‘el jerko”.
My wife and kids are kind of worried about me. They keep asking how I am and what I am doing. My one son wants me to take some cooking classes. I do like to cook and BBQ. Maybe. My other son thinks I should take up golf. I just cant get into it. I keep picturing the old guys that would play golf when I was in HS and worked at a course. Maybe occasionally would be OK , but not all the time. Golf can swallow you.
My wife and I are going to do some traveling and maybe that will help. Maybe I will get over my fear of flying or maybe I will develop my own new course of therapy for anxiety.
I keep remembering the one guy I saw years ago who told me you don’t retire from something, you retire to something. That is probably true , but I still think I needed to step back.
The thing about being a therapist is that you have to care. No matter how much experience you have, or how good you are at setting boundaries, you still have to care. I heard Salvador Minuchin say at a conference one time “If you are not dependent, get out of the field!”. Sometimes the problem with caring is you get swallowed up into other people’s lives. So at this time I am going to keep trying to write my own new story or maybe just keep trying to develop one I put on hold. We’ll see– and maybe I will occasionally write something about how it’s going