12,055 days
or 17,359,200 minutes. How do you bring closure to a 33-year career in the newsroom?
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On the day I was to bring books and other possessions of mine home from the office, Sue, my daughter, offered to help and I accepted without asking why. Maybe she knew I had been withdrawn, pensive and feeling low for weeks on end, with the date of retirement approaching. She probably wanted to prop me up at a time of hardship.
The previous day, I had managed to say goodbyes to my colleagues without being emotional. I had decided to move my belongings, not on the day of retirement, but on the next day, a Saturday. I had not liked the idea of holding things in a box and bidding emotion-laden farewells.
When Sue and I arrived at the empty office, she gawked with dismay at the stacks of books precariously piled and the clutter of newspaper clippings, papers and pens scattered on the desk. But her forthcoming complaint about the mess was undoubtedly a welcome distraction for me, as I was feeling depressed about the idea of leaving the newspaper company, my place of work during the previous 33 years, for good.
The realization that I had nowhere to go came over me a few days later. When I saw children go to school from our roadside fourth-floor home, I wondered what I was doing now. When the children were on their way to school, I knew I would otherwise have been holding a morning conference with other editorial staff on the issues to be written about.
Later I sought the company of old friends of mine in an attempt to pull myself out of growing lethargy. When I told them that I had retired, many of them asked, directly or in a roundabout way, what I was now going to do for living. None offered to congratulate me. Instead, they were genuinely worried about my future.
Their concern was justifiable because most of us had meager annuities and pitiable savings. We were from a generation that was finding itself at the end of a long-held tradition of successive protection among family members, which had lasted from the time immemorial.
As the tradition dictated, we provided for our parents, and even our siblings in not-so-rare cases. We paid hefty amounts of money for the education of our children. But few of us believed we would rely on our grownup children for support in old age.
Society had drastically changed against the tradition by the time we were quitting work. Large three-generation families had given way to nuclear families. Companies had stopped guaranteeing lifelong employment when no viable social safety nets were in place.
We were victims of these societal changes. Some of my friends had been jobless for long. Some others, who had quit jobs at big companies, were now working for small vendors or doing odd jobs that came their way.
Among the exceptions were a small number of friends practicing law, working as government employees, employed as university faculty members or still placed in corporate management positions. And I realized that I had been among the blessed few.
I had survived the ups and downs of corporate fortune.
I had risen nearly to the top of the corporate ladder — specifically to the post of editor-in-chief of an English-language daily in Seoul — before I retired in 2013 at the official age of 60 and at the biological age of 61. (My official birth registration had been delayed because my parents, who had lost their children within one year of birth, were not convinced I would survive longer1.)
In other words, I was among the endangered, yet privileged species working in one place to the retirement age. I came to realize I had nothing to complain about though I might have regrets. Moreover, transition to post-retirement life was made easier, as I was set to continue to work for the next two years as a guest editorial writer.
During this transitional period, I learned to my surprise that I was in fact well prepared for retirement. I was prepared for leisure, mostly reading, listening to music and travel for pleasure, and temporary jobs that I was occasionally called on to do.
My English skills allowed me to select from a wide range of books, authored by world-renowned scholars, specialists and novelists, for personal pleasure. They also allowed me to engage in Korean-to-English translation from time to time, help students write essays and travel to the United States and other foreign countries with few language barriers.
In addition, jazz became a favorite genre of music for me. I occasionally went to jazz concerts and took my family to New Orleans for fun. When listening to jazz became a hobby for me, I thanked one of my friends, with whom I had taken two quarterly programs of weekly lessons on jazz at a nearby cultural center years before.
Lastly but not least, I have been running online writing programs for more than two years to help Korean college graduates prepare for advanced studies in the United States or any other English-speaking country. I select articles from English-language news outlets and magazines as materials for use in writing essays and making presentations. I also select books for use in debates.
It gives me much happiness for me to edit essays for the participants, explain terminologies used in the articles and help them practice making speeches. After all, teaching is what I wanted as a lifelong job, though I had to abandon the idea for one reason or another.
Another post-retirement pleasure comes from the anticipation that a grandson will be born in several months. To rephrase a Louis Armstrong song, I will hear the baby cry and I will watch him grow. He will learn much more than I’ll ever know.
As the jazz singer croons, “Yes, I think to myself what a wonderful world.”
Editor: My official birthday and actual birthday have a one-month gap. My dad's explanation was, "I wanted you to have one more month of pay before retirement."
beautiful last reflections of a long career and retirement. I started my career in the newsroom. There's no place like it and it's so cool your dad was there for 33 years!
Lovely post. 💜