Ironing wrinkles

I sometimes warn people that retirement is not an obvious transition. If you have defined yourself by career goals it will only be more difficult because that sudden loss of relevance can jar us; all the more so if you live alone.

For me retirement was a doorway to living more authentically but even then calming the system down after decades in the same field takes time. After 16 months I am still adjusting to living outside the work bubble I lived in for over 3 decades as well as to an existence in a female gender role.

Over the last few years everything I believed in has been examined carefully helped along by the enforced solitude of the pandemic. Already well-suited for introspection as an introvert, I was able to ask myself point blank who I really was. In asking the question I realized I still had much cleanup in removing dictates I had bought into as a child as being absolutes.

The negative trappings of gender burrow their way into our psyches so perniciously that they require extra effort to eradicate. Someone with my level of gender dysphoria was never going to be able to survive on occasional outings as that bridge had been crossed many years before plus that life had been bolstered by work distraction. Thus I needed a new workable baseline post-career whose remaining wrinkles I am still ironing out so it's a good thing then that I kept the iron.

Do I miss career? like I do a hole in the head.