STILL LOOKING FOR WORK?

One of my least favourite questions: “So, are you still on the radio?” My past clings doggedly to my present and if it exists, to my future. “Looking Ahead” should be more an example of “re-inventing oneself, not pining for the what-used-to-be.

There was a long and interesting New York Times piece about the new life being found by suddenly jobless people over 55. Most were high-flying, highly paid executives. Many simply couldn’t believe that their prosperity was suddenly over. But they weather the storm and re-rig their sails for the future. (Sorry for the blurry metaphor.)

“More than five million Americans age 55 or older run their own businesses or are otherwise self-employed, according to the Small Business Administration. And the number of self-employed people ages 55 to 64 is soaring, the agency says, climbing 52 percent from 2000 to 2007.” That is really the centerpiece of the entire article: that there is life after you get whacked, but you have to do it for yourself. Out-of-work executives do a retread on their experience and come out doing for themselves the same thing they did for big money as corporate executives.

That would not be my style. Could I, for example, have become a broadcast consultant after my career ended? In fact it “ended” many times. My first radio career ended suddenly in November of 1970 and was replaced by a television career which thrived mightily but ended, or petered out in about 1977. During those few years I worked on the news side doing features, wrote, and hosted several documentaries, appeared on many panel shows. My career in theatre as actor/director/producer was short and only sometimes fruitful. It ended without fanfare around 1983. Finding myself “on the beach” for the umpteenth time, I reluctantly returned to what everyone remembers me for: open line radio. So the eternal question is sadly, appropriate.

If this recounting seems long and dull, imagine how it must feel to the person who is living it. My biggest mistake was to cling to the vocation that produced my reputation. I should have re-invented myself. I didn’t.

During my time on TV I did a feature about mid-life crisis. I found several people who had re-invented themselves. In some cases to the extreme: they left their spouses, abandoned their friends, changed careers, and tried to start all over again. One executive went into making gourmet frozen foods. A plastic surgeon abandoned everything but his vocation. A banker moved away from banking. The central characteristic was that they no longer felt fulfilled. The people in the New York Times piece didn’t leave. They were stranded. They were marooned on the desert island of job dismissal.

To make the circle complete: if you define yourself by “what” you are instead of “who” you are, you will be trapped. You will become, as I once wrote “nothing but the sum total of your obligations.”

I salute the ambitious people who pick themselves up off the carpet. My only comment is: what a chance it would have been to start over again doing something new, refreshing, rewarding, and fulfilling. Alas, too many are in a rut. And it is that “rut” that makes retirement difficult. You have to start believing the world hasn’t come to an end and all that is left is the golf course or exotic travel. So the eternal question: what’s next?