Cockeyed Optimist

The press and tv have been making much in recent times of the need for everyone, including the elderly, to keep going if they want to keep going. Even the government (here in Australia, anyway; don’t know about elsewhere) has jumped on this bandwagon, though it’s possible to suspect that they might have ulterior motives.

The message amounts to this: when you retire, don’t relax too much. There is plenty of evidence, so it is claimed, that those who take on new work or activities, or develop new interests, stay healthier than those who retire to their holiday shack on the coast and fish (that is, do nothing).

I think I might qualify as a positive example. I left a full-time career at a university in 1995, when I was 62. After a few months accompanying my wife and son on a very enjoyable world trip (she was working, on an academic sabbatical), I returned home and looked for ways of occupying myself and bringing in some income to supplement my superannuation. I had a couple of false starts: trying multi-level marketing of dietary supplements (made one sale, to an ex-colleague); trying to sell a scholarship package, a very good one (ASG - we had our son enrolled since age 2, and it was very useful when he was at high school and when he started university a couple of years ago) - again no sales. I really don’t think I have the right personality for face-to-face or telephone selling.

Then I picked up a line that I had been doing very intermittently, since before I left the university: proof-reading and editing. I did a few private jobs, mainly editing books for people I knew at the university, until my contacts started to run out, and then I joined Yaro Starak’s BetterEdit, which turned out to be a very good decision, in several ways. Since then I have been editing student work, ranging from 1500 word essays to 70,000 word doctoral theses. The work is engaging, my clients are grateful, and it brings in some money. 

And, very recently, I have started blogging, with Yaro Starak as my mentor; we shall see …

So, as the experts recommend, I’m not doing nothing and I’ve got some highly-engaging interests; I also try to exercise regularly - I play tennis a couple of times a week, and I attempt to walk every day.

My dog Dylan is another example: he is over 12 years old, which is elderly for a dog, especially a big one (he is a German Shorthaired Pointer), and he has a very engaging hobby, which also makes him exercise - he hunts possums around the house, in a state of great excitement when he spots one. Unfortunately he has caught a couple, neither of which I managed to get to the vet in time, I’m sorry to say.

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