Things retirees should not think about! (S.P. & J.S.: Warning! Read onward at your own risk! ☺)

A natural thing most people do is look ahead to the future. Having spent so much time with high school students, I have enjoyed listening to them anticipating going to college. And college students tend to look ahead to starting their careers.

Once you start a career, it is natural to think about getting married, buying a house, and having children. And once a person reaches mid-career (their 40s generally), it is inevitable for people to start thinking about retirement.

So then you retire, and what do you have to look forward to? Uh...one thing looms most obviously on the horizon, and it is the one thing that people not only do not wish to discuss, it is better not even thinking about it!

All right, so let’s think about books instead. Avid readers such as myself are fond of the quote Too Many Books, Too Little Time. While I was working, that referred to the fact that my reading time was extremely limited during the school year. That is no longer a problem, but there is another consideration: my list of unread books contains about 440 books. Since retiring, I read a bit less than a book per week. But I am still buying a book approximately every six weeks. So doing a bit of math (which I am still capable of doing after nearly 6 months of retirement, lol), if I continue the same reading and buying paces, it will take me about 13 years to finish reading all my unread books. That’s possible.

But I have winnowed my collection down to the books I enjoyed reading most the first time, and for several years I have dreamed of going back and re-reading my entire collection once I retired. My total collection is currently 3,100 books / e-books / fiction magazines. At the same current one-per-week pace–and assuming no new buying at all!–that would take me 62 years to finish reading! Uh, I don’t need to reveal my age for you to realize that ain’t gonna happen.

All right, forget that idea. Let’s think about all the wonderful students I stay in touch with on a semi-regular or regular basis. Most of you realize what a good relationship I have had with many of my students. It starts when they spend time in the Math Lab before, during, or after school (or, in some cases, all three times). Some of those friendships continue when they go to college through email, IM or Facebook. But once they graduate college, and become busy with careers and families, nearly all my former students inevitably drift away. We might stay in touch occasionally, a few times per year at best, once every few years more commonly. And there are 2 exceptions who have passed from former students to become my closest friends. But generally, all the former student whom I stay in regular contact with are still college or graduate students.

In past years, losing touch with former students was tolerable, because I always had new students taking their place. Last year, my final year teaching, I developed very close relationships with more than a half-dozen students, and I fully expect to stay close to all of them through their college years. But once that group graduates college in about 5-6 years? That is yet another thing I try not to think about.

In six months I have realized why senior citizens tend to live in the past rather than in the future.