April 26, 2019: Retirement is a process, not an event, nor place

I may have at one time imagined that retirement would mean a definitive, clear finality of a career followed by a new, different and possibly final place to live the next twenty, thirty or forty years. I know now that at least this part is not true. Retirement is a process, a slow extraction from my career, my office, my weekly routines with my assistant, my colleagues, my students and my alarm clock. I am in the process of withdrawing from all of those things. My faculty office is almost fully boxed up. The small number of boxes almost surprised me, but when I look back on how I was constantly curating and triaging books, pages, files and the like these past twenty years, and it is not surprising. That plus the process of having digitized years of teaching materials and research articles.

The boxes are primarily full of personal memorabilia, most of it joyful, some of it depressing. I have a yellowing copy of the issue of the Wall Street Journal from September 12, 2001. I have the notice of the death of the Loyola president who hired me, Hap Ridley. I have the student newspaper issue announcing my stepping down as dean almost eighteen years ago. But the good stuff is really good stuff: family photos, artwork from Jane and Gaby, some nicely framed articles. There is the full page article from El Mercurio covering our launch of the Loyola MBA program in Santiago, Chile, in 1995.

As the the 'place,' we are in the process of building our new place. Final drawings and permits are coming. Closing on the purchase of the lot in Wisconsin is next week. We will be in Wisconsin in three weeks, hopefully to see some progress on the actual construction and to make final design decisions. If all goes according to my best hopes, we could close and move into our new place on my 68th birthday, September 25. Let's hope for the best.

Lighthouse, Vashon Island, Washington