Mid-Air

 

Mid-Air

2 min readJust now

Stuck. That’s the word that keeps circling back.

Can’t change. Won’t change. Am I simply the person I’ve always been, sealed and delivered?

The theorists have had a field day with personality. How to measure it, map it, sort it into tidy boxes. Whether it bends or holds firm. The debate has been running longer than most of us have been alive.

My own view is mixed. There are things about me that aren’t going anywhere. The wiring runs too deep. But step changes? Those I believe in. Small pivots that quietly redefine how you move through the day.

Take this one: I walked away from social media. Twitter. Facebook. Even WhatsApp. No announcement, no grand exit. Just stopped.


Retirement will be another. Three months away now. Most people I know wrapped up years earlier. For me it crept up quietly and then suddenly felt very close.

I’m not sure I’ll be ready. I’m not sure readiness is even the right frame.

What I do know is that I’ll feel the loss. Not of the work itself, perhaps. But of the shape it gave the day. The reason to be somewhere. To be someone with a role.

The wardrobe shift has already been underway. Working from home most of the week, I quietly stopped reaching for the formal clothes. Stopped buying them too. The suits stayed on their hangers until they didn’t need to be there at all.

What retirement actually looks like for me – I haven’t figured that out yet. I’m still in the middle of that question. What I do know is what I don’t want. I see it in some of my retired friends. The way a simple errand expands to fill an entire morning. Tasks that once took twenty minutes somehow consuming the day. A slow drift that worries me a little.

There has to be more than that.

I just haven’t landed on what it is yet.


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