We’re all getting older. My daily, grudging glimpse in the mirror reminds me that my beard wasn’t always gray, and there was a time *gasp* when no beard grew at all. One of the realities of the brave new world we inhabit is that career stability has become a myth. My father, in the brief time I knew him, worked as a house painter. My stepfather worked in a sewage plant for a small town and drove a snowplow in winter to make ends meet. These utilitarian jobs seemed never to end. I made the mistake of going into higher education, not realizing that the risks were much higher and that I would make more money working in a sewage plant than I have ever made in my professional career, PhD in hand. So it rankles me when I hear professors complaining about being too busy in retirement. Retirement: what a concept. When the guy who has custodianship of my minuscule retirement account from Nashotah House, after his gentle awaking from the defibrillator, looks at my records he always informs me, “you’re not well placed for retirement.” Talking to my big brother we agree—our retirement plan is to die on the job. So, when someone asks you to write another book, remember maybe it is some guy your own age who is trying not to starve.
As a society we’re aging. Those who managed not to be fired by Fundamentalists have had a secure, tenure-ridden ride through the occupation that some of the rest of us were denied. Busy in retirement? Some of us will never have that privilege. Funny thing is, it’s not funny. I sometimes lean back in my editorial chair and realize, if this hadn’t happened to me, I would probably look at it the same way. I would have published that second, third, and fourth book, and people would actually think my opinion mattered. I would’ve become a resource to be tapped rather than a dancing monkey who hopes for anything shiny. Is that another gray hair?
I don’t belittle the hard work of higher education—it’s not an easy profession. But writing books? That’s the fun part! Privilege induces blindness. How rare an opportunity it is to teach! While we as a nation devalue it, in many parts of the world those who shape future minds are revered. Yet elsewhere in the world there are those who are far worse off even than an editor—those for whom life is constant suffering and surviving another day is not reasonably assured. How easily I forget this as I neglect to balance my checkbook for fear of what I might find. We shouldn’t complain when someone asks us to give back, even in retirement. Those of us capable of writing books sometimes lack only the bona fide of a college or university position to do so. Otherwise I might hope to retire as well some day.
“Photo by Chalmers Butterfield”
