Embracing Life After Full-Time Work

This post is both personal and universal, dealing, as it does, with something that the majority of us will, with luck, face at some point, either through enforced or voluntary means. I am talking about the decision to finish with full time work and look for other things to fill up the time. I started thinking about what life might look like after full time work last August. It turned out that my wife had been thinking about it for far longer and was waiting for me to catch up!

The Background to my Decision

I qualified as a teacher in 1992, originally in secondary school teaching Economics and Business Studies. I moved into teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) in 1995 when I went to Japan on the JET Programme. That is now 30 years ago, and I have been teaching in that field ever since. When I started my first PGCE in 1991, it was blackboards and chalk and now 34 years later it is smartboards and apps! Perhaps more than any other generation of teachers we have dealt with massive technological and social changes that have altered the appearance of the profession beyond recognition. At the heart of it, however, things have stayed the same. What keeps us going are the students. Both those who want to learn and take on board most of your teaching, and those who don’t but improve anyway because of your efforts. There are of course those students who refuse to learn and refuse to improve, but even they will walk away with skills that will help them later on despite their resistance! There are still times that I walk out of a lesson feeling really good because of how well it went, but for various reasons, social, educational and personal, those lessons are becoming fewer and farther between. That is one of the main factors that came into play, although there were many others related to workload. Teachers will know what I am talking about, and wholeheartedly understand, and many non-teachers will be disinterested at best and antagonistic at worst. Let me say, though, that I am very glad I became a teacher and I hope many of my students are!

There is one other factor that plays into this. My Dad was the same age as I am now when he died, so I am very well aware that the later you leave things, the more chance there is that you won’t end up doing them. Now, he always hated, and perhaps even feared, the idea of no longer working. To him, not having a job equated to not having a purpose. Yes, he may have changed his view if he had lived long enough to finish full time work, but I somehow doubt it. Even if he had, he would have been doing everything he could to keep busy. My Mum, who is still going, became a tai chi teacher after 60 and only finished doing three or four classes a week in her 80s! By observing their differing approaches, and by learning new approaches thanks to my wife’s guidance, and the possibilities that the advent of new technology has opened up, I suppose I have found my own way.

The Next Step

I submitted my resignation on my birthday this year, which happens to be a landmark one! Well, I have always liked the grand gesture, so it suited me. I finish in June when my final intake of students officially get their results and, in the vast majority of cases, move onto university courses. It wouldn’t have seemed right to leave before then, so the coincidence of my birthday and the three month notice period ending at precisely that point made it perfect.

During the summer I hope to pick up Pre-Sessional work somewhere which is something I hope to do every summer for as long as I am able to. After that, I will consult my notebook which contains every idea that I have had or will have for life after full time work. Some of the ideas may not come to fruition but some of them will, and it is those ideas that will give me the direction I am looking for. These ideas cover curation of our family history, volunteering, part-time work, blogging, learning, creative pursuits and places to go. Just the simple act of writing these ideas down has given me a new mindset. I am now actively looking forward to what comes next in my life, whereas five years ago the prospect was a very scary one.

Some of you might be wondering about how my wife and I can afford for me to do this. Well, we have been very careful with money throughout our married lives, so that will simply continue. We are lucky enough to have no mortgage to pay, giving us far more leeway than many, and I am well aware of the role of good fortune and having married a financial genius in that! To be honest, money doesn’t matter that much beyond the role it has in keeping us comfortable and allowing for certain treats.

I have many ideas, as I said, one of which is to reflect upon my experiences in the form of a podcast, although that’s still very much an embryonic thought. Will their be an audience? Will it be useful to me as I look ahead? If the answer is yes to both or yes to the second I will give it a go. As they say, watch (listen to) this space.

If any of you are interested enough to reply with ideas, thoughts, reflections or experiences of your own, I will be very interested to read them. So, pop them below and don’t forget to follow my blog if you are interested in what happens next.