What is the first thing you dreaded doing when you retired?

When I closed my law practice at the end of 2016, I became preoccupied with how I would define myself. I willingly shed my professional status, but the word “retirement” didn’t seem to apply to my life. It only made me feel uncomfortable about the upcoming experience.

Laurie Geary, a life coach and community educator in Gloucester who succumbed to breast cancer before she herself could enjoy life in later years, promoted her beliefs with the energizing slogan, ”Re-Fired, not Re-Tired!” That started me on seeking my own meme for who I was, and what direction to pursue.

Previously, my identity related to my marital status, my parental role, my career, my world view, my geographical location, and a unique accomplishment that I highly valued. I was a married woman, a mom raising four children, a divorce lawyer and mediator, a progressive New Englander, and founder of a Montessori school.

I didn’t have to think about any of it. And, no mention of age in those descriptions. Too busy to even care if I was “middle-aged” and no one else I knew seemed to care about it either, except for the occasional media pundit hired to write a clever essay for TIME magazine about the angst of Baby Boomers seeking to escape the ravages of time by exercising.

When I closed my office—and even before that when I signed up for Medicare—my age became a prominent identifier. Now I’m seen as a senior, a senior citizen, retired, retired lawyer, retiree, grandmother, widow, boomer, older, old, or elder, eligible for discounts and living on a fixed income.

Although I don’t seem to mind the term “old hippie.” I’m sorta proud of it, rooted in my coming of age years, the Sixties.

Approaching my own sixties into seventies decades, I navigated a mine field of assumptions, using valuable energy fending off the pigeonholes mentioned above. A waste of my mental energy but for a while I was caught up in the controversies and went for the bait, on a mission to vanquish stereotypes.

When that initial defensiveness calmed down—after all, I felt more like a work in progress, less like an immovable object needing a title—I concluded that whatever populates my time and my mind has created a “real me” that is right at this phase of my life.

I guess I am just the real me in 2019, same as I was the real me in 1982 or 1993 or 2004. No classification adds to the conversation now, just as it was not required then. There are no bright lines between categories—there are too many individual variations in response to life’s transitions.

If someone happens to ask the question in a tone I consider patronizing, “What do you do with all your time now that you’re retired?”, I answer politely with what I do most these days, writing and related activities.

I submitted two proposals and now conduct writing groups at two senior centers, so I might say I’m a facilitator, mentor, or advisor. I had never wanted to be a teacher, one of only three choices for younger girls in my generation, the others being nurse or homemaker. I’ve been surprised at how I enjoy the role of teaching that I took on informally, unexpectedly channeling my mother’s passion.

I write a monthly column for my small town paper, The Wenhamite, making me a columnist with deadlines, akin to my fictional role model, Lois Lane.

I write lengthier pieces at least a couple of times a month and post to my blog—sometimes I will answer that I’m a blogger. David encouraged me to go public with my writing and was responsible for the launch. My motto on my website business card is “Writing for my thoughtful peers.”

We know who we are, without needing a sandwich board.

I am working on putting my scattered nostalgia pieces together into a self-published memoir on Amazon by the end of 2020. I hope to elevate myself from writer to author, a goal I have set for myself.

In the meantime, I occasionally submit an essay or nostalgia piece to the Boston Sunday Globe Magazine with hopes of being selected for publication on their popular back page feature, Connections.

I am beginning to see that any word with “tired” in it doesn’t apply. My command central has changed from my law office, the center of my career where the phone and the appointment calendar and the clients sitting on the other side of my conference table defined my days.

My calendar remains filled, my phone is with me instead of on my desk, but my former clients who desperately sought hope and security for the future have by now gone on with their post-divorce lives. And so I have separated from them, going in my own direction, re-centering my priorities completely.

I’m more preoccupied with what I’m doing than how I am labeled. If anything, I see that the word “aspiring” accurately describes an important theme of my life now.

That’s the old rebellious streak in me, resisting compartments. I’m reclaiming it now, and it feels like a great fit.