U<\/span>nless you\u2019ve never saved a dime or will be paying for luxury cars, Aspen condos, or child support for the rest of your natural life, you are destined, at some point, to retire from your full-time career.\nIf you\u2019re in your mid-60s or perhaps even older, let me break it to you gently: that time is probably now or very soon.<\/p>\n I know, I know. You are the chief professional. The office cannot function without you. You don\u2019t even take vacations because of the calamity your absence would cause. And besides, what the heck are you going to do when you retire? Your career has been your everything. You might feel like you\u2019ve got nothing.<\/p>\n Like many of my lawyer colleagues, you may be facing discomfort and even fear at the idea of retiring. The thought of losing that \u201csecret sharer\u201d through retirement is daunting – and frightening. We\u2019ve been \u201cStockholm Syndromed\u201d by our careers for most of our adult lives.<\/p>\n Well, I\u2019m here to help you break free of those shackles and to assure you that you actually do have something, whether you realize it or not.<\/p>\n Surely there are things you\u2019ve enjoyed besides your career. I don\u2019t mean the bull roast or crab feast with your work friends. I mean the things that have given you a real sense of satisfaction and purpose at any point in your past.<\/p>\n I know I did.<\/p>\n By cultivating a serious involvement in those things, I unwittingly wound up preparing for life after retirement from the day I started working. And you can, too.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been fortunate to have had some great hobbies throughout my lifetime. My mom was a reader, and we kids were encouraged to read very early. I read anything I could get my hands on.<\/p>\n When I got to college and law school, all the boring stuff I was forced to read made me more eager to read \u201cfun\u201d stuff such as crime, mystery, and humor. And once I had graduated from law school and was entrenched in a career track, my passion for reading led me to dabble in writing.<\/p>\n I was a big fan of Victorian and Edwardian period detective fiction and decided to write a novel along those lines. It took me about ten years to complete the novel. But what a great hobby!<\/p>\n This hobby became a bonafide side gig as I began publishing books, and today, it\u2019s the main event of my retirement encore career, with my latest novel being Clonk!<\/em><\/p>\n As a kid, I found my parent\u2019s \u201860s high-fi console stereo to be quite fascinating and listened endlessly to whatever pile of records happened to be on the LP changer. I was particularly intrigued by the sounds of the instruments and how they were recorded.<\/p>\n And once my older sister began playing her Jimi Hendrix albums, suddenly, I wanted to play guitar and make those sounds. (\u201cHow tough could it be,\u201d I thought. \u201cAll the guitars have built-in whammy bars?\u201d).\nMy interest in music and sound led me down the wonderful rabbit hole of making amateur recordings with my tiny reel-to-reel recorder, which led to summer jobs to buy better recorders and better stereos and, finally, a guitar and amplifier.<\/p>\n And all of this led to joining up with friends to be in a \u201cband\u201d or \u201cgroup.\u201d I played in several amateur groups throughout my twenties while attending college in the evenings (so that I could work during the day to pay for all of it).<\/p>\n To this day, playing music occupies a lot of my time. Thanks to technology, I still record with my band buddies, though we\u2019re all located remotely around the US. It\u2019s a real source of passion and purpose.<\/p>\n Where do hobbies even come from? Well, we\u2019ve all got to do something to have fun. So let \u201cfun\u201d be your first step in imagining your encore career.<\/p>\n Think about what has given you a real sense of satisfaction and purpose at any point in your past.<\/p>\n Step one is to find and list those things that have given you satisfaction. Any of those will make a fine encore career.<\/p>\n The good news is you don\u2019t have to go \u201ccold turkey.\u201d I am now, finally, \u201cmostly\u201d retired. That\u2019s step two. You can begin by leaving your office and \u201csemi-retiring.\u201d If, as a professional, you are able to do a little part-time work in retirement, that is ok.<\/p>\n Volunteer if you can\u2019t engage in paid work. I am still an attorney, and I make a pretense of maintaining a small, \u201csolo\u201d practice. But, thankfully, my hobbies have taken over as my encore careers. The Law is now in my rearview mirror.<\/p>\n So, think about absolutely anything that has given you joy, pleasure, or satisfaction. Music? Art? Gardening? Decorating? Working on your car? Any of these can be your encore. Chances are, like me, you\u2019ve been doing them for years if not decades. This means that you, too, have been preparing your retirement encore career for a very long time.<\/p>\n And if you can\u2019t simply think of anything, it\u2019s probably because you\u2019ve had an incredibly busy and fulfilling career helping others. You can still do that. Being a volunteer is a great choice for an encore.<\/p>\n To conclude, don\u2019t discount or downplay your \u201cfun\u201d things. And start getting a foot out of the office door, now!<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how you can too<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13770,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[170,172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spring-summer-2023","category-spring-summer-2023-features"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13705"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14045,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13705\/revisions\/14045"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}It All Begins With Hobbies<\/h3>\n
Then There was Music<\/h3>\n
You\u2019ve Gotta Have Fun<\/h3>\n
\n
No Need to Go Cold Turkey<\/h3>\n
J. P. (Paul) Rieger is a real estate attorney and amateur musician who grew up in Baltimore and now resides in Towson, Maryland. Clonk!, <\/em><\/a>published by Apprentice House Press<\/a> at Loyola University, Maryland is Paul\u2019s second work of fiction following his 2013 publication of The Case Files of Roderick Misely, Consultant<\/em>. He greatly enjoys music, books, and humor. He is old but has retained most of his teeth and hair.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"