Paul Blumenthal shares about what he is looking forward to after recently retiring.
I retired recently. Of course, that, by itself, is not unusual. Available data indicates that 11,000 Americans retire every day. Some of my generation-mates will retire from factories or from office desks or from their own business.
In my case, my trendy standing desk was an operating table, and while I could ask that it be raised or lowered, I couldn’t take a break to walk around the office or around the block to get a coffee during a long operation. My resulting varicose veins are surely a badge of honor.
Indeed, I was a practicing physician for 50 years, and as Judy Collins once intoned, “who knows where the time goes?” It’s gone by in a flash.
Retirement is formally defined as “leaving one’s job and ceasing to work.” That “ceasing” bit sounds pretty ominous, doesn’t it?
For many, ceasing to work might be a blessing, but my own work has been filled with friendships, discovery and, as a friend recently put it, a positive impact on others. I will miss it. It’s also not an accident that I chose graduation season to “matriculate” into retirement. “Matriculate” sounds much more positive. None of that “ceasing” business. It comes from the Latin, literally “to enroll.” Something to which I can look forward. Duo-lingo awaits. So, after these many years of leaving home early and returning late, I feel like a soldier returning home after decades at the front. Like Odysseus finally returning to Ithaca and his beloved Penelope after his many trials, absent the suitors in the entry hall.
Upon arriving at home after my last workday, my own beloved gave me a big hug and then promptly presented me with a list of things that needed doing around the house and around our lives. A second career begins, and a shopping opportunity. Power tools. Oh boy. With a Perspective, I am Dr. Paul Blumenthal.
Paul Blumenthal is Emeritus Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Stanford, where he practiced and taught for 20 years. Raised on Chicago’s south side, he has lived in places as diverse as Kenya, and Madagascar and worked in over 40 countries globally.