On Aging and Loss

The bell curve of aging.
(Image: canva.com)

We all want to live a long and healthy life. We want to be the ones making it far through the bell curve of life expectancy. I know I do.

There’s an unanticipated problem with succeeding.

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Retirement is Obsolete

Midjourney AI: "an empty rocking chair on a porch with an elderly man running through a field in the distance"
Midjourney AI: “an empty rocking chair on a porch with an elderly man running through a field in the distance”

I “retired” in 2001 at 44, after an 18-year career at Microsoft.

There was a spreadsheet (in Excel, of course) that calculated I was done. The meteoric rise of the Microsoft stock price and the serendipitous timing of my joining came together to give me options (including literally stock options), for which I am forever grateful.

However.

I was recently reading some articles discussing the traditional transition from the work-a-day world — aka a “job” — to a world of leisure and choice — aka “retirement”.

I was getting increasingly uncomfortable with the assumptions and preconceptions of what it means to retire.

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