My Retirement Plan Had 14 Sections – It Missed the 3 Fears Underneath

In the two years before I retired, I put “write myself a job description for my retirement” on a list. Retirement, for those keeping score, is the part where you don’t have a job.

My 14 Sections Told Me Something

The list lived on my phone, in a note called Elaine’s Retirement. It had 14 sections, because apparently my retirement required the same scope as my 1994 dissertation. Spiritual, Hobbies, Creativity, Learning, Social Connection, Bucket List, and eight more.

Under Cooking and Baking I put croissants, babka, and a Cornish pasty. Under Physical Activity I named four hikes, and beside one I wrote the mileage. Several entries had checkboxes.

There was a section called To Do, sitting inside my list of things I wanted to do for fun, and a section called Ways to Earn Income, in a plan for not working. Further down I had written, “Best planner for retirees (create one?)” I was going to solve my retirement by inventing a product for it.

The job description line sits near the end, past the homemade jam and the pottery and the northern lights. “What is my calling during retirement, and perhaps I can craft a job description for this chapter that aligns my calling to my new work.”

Welcome to the inner workings of my very busy mind.

Now, 14 months into retirement, I can read that list for what it was. I was trying to plan my way out of being afraid, and I was good enough at planning that I almost got away with it. Those 30 years as a social psychologist, studying how people move through big change, and apparently my strategy was to make a really good list.

There were three fears in that list, and I could not see any of them until now. I hear the same three now from almost every woman I coach.

Fear #1: If I’m Not My Job, Who Am I?

The women I work with say it like this: “I did my job for 35 years, and I don’t know who I am without it.” “I’m at a party, and I have no idea what to say when someone asks what I do.” One woman told me that when she got sick and couldn’t work, she felt like she stopped existing. If she wasn’t achieving or having an impact, she said, she didn’t exist.

Another woman, who ran a large organization, named what being the boss had given her: respect, accomplishment, and the feeling of being current.

Work had been daily proof that we mattered.

I had my own version of this. For about a year after I retired, I still reached for my title whenever I met someone new.

Noticing which parts of the old role still run your days is one of five reflections in a free guide I wrote called Who Am I Now? (You will find the link to the guide at the end.)

Fear #2: What If I Slow Down and Feel Empty?

This one still hits close to home. I have a fear of having nothing on the calendar, so my coping strategy is to fill it up. It’s ironic, because by the end of the day, if not sooner, I’m craving more room to read a book, do some knitting, or paint. And yet I keep generating tasks that compete directly with being able to just chill.

When I look at what I’m afraid of underneath all that, it’s boredom, irrelevance, and getting old fast.

A woman I once spoke with told me that on the mornings she woke up to an empty calendar, she felt terrified. That was her word.

Another woman on my newsletter list said she felt lost and drifting, and that she didn’t want to fill her calendar with things just for the sake of keeping busy. She’s onto something. You can fill every hour of the day and still get to the end of it feeling like none of it was yours.

Sitting down to do something creative, or something with no output at all, is hard. Invisible forces tell you to stay busy and productive, and most of us grew up on those messages. We carried that rulebook into every new phase of life, and it mostly served us well. This is the first phase where bringing it forward wholesale doesn’t quite fit.

Fear #3: What If I Waste The Years I Have Left?

Go back to that note on my phone for a second, with its bucket list running from Norway for the northern lights to the Camino de Santiago to the Milky Way, which I wrote down as “see the Milky Way many times.” The list was my answer to the question I was most afraid of. What am I going to do with all this free time? Underneath it sat a second question: What if I waste it?

The women I coach have this one too, and I hear it most clearly when they tell me what they want but then don’t go get it. It’s a trip they’ve been thinking about for years, or an art class, or the thing they always said they’d do when there was time. One woman had wanted to be on a stage since she was a girl, and another wants movement and adventure more than she wants any possession. Doing something purely for themselves feels like a reward they’d have to earn, and there is always someone else’s need standing in front of theirs.

Meanwhile the window of good health and freedom is open, and it will not stay open forever. That’s the real struggle of this chapter, learning to handle the guilt long enough to say yes to something that’s just for you.

The other way this fear shows up is a hunt for a contribution big enough to be worthy of the years left. That’s the old rulebook again, and a big commitment crowds out the very things you were looking forward to. One woman was deep in that search when she stopped halfway through a session and said, “Maybe it doesn’t have to be such a big thing. Maybe it’s two little ones.”

What I’d Ask You to Try

This week my husband wanted a nap. It was the middle of the afternoon and I wasn’t tired, but I lay down next to him, put on a podcast, and slept for about 15 minutes. I woke up relaxed and glad I’d let myself do it. That evening I told him it was the best part of my day.

I’m not taking up daily napping. It was a small experiment I let myself run, and I liked it enough that I’ll do it again.

So that’s what I’d ask. Sometime this week, give yourself an hour with no purpose at all. Not exercise, not errands, not anything you could later call productive. A nap, sitting outside watching the clouds, a novel in the middle of the afternoon.

Then listen to what your head says while you’re doing it. It might tell you you’re wasting time, or that you should be accomplishing something, or ask who you are if you’re not being useful. Different words, same old rulebook. That is the voice worth getting to know, because all three fears speak in it.

What Changes

None of these fears dissolve because you decided to be positive about them. They loosen when you name them and then give yourself one small permission, and then another. That’s how it happens, gradually: a week that feels like yours, then a month, rather than a grand plan for the next 20 years.

A First Step

Whether you retired last month, you’re still deciding, or you’re a few years in and still finding your footing, the work is learning to hear yourself underneath the rulebook. You’re the one who knows what interests you, what you’re curious about, and how you’d want to grow if nobody were keeping score. You’ve been outvoted for at least 60 years.

I made my free Who Am I Now? guide to help you hear yourself. Five short reflections you can move through in about 20 minutes, or sit with slowly if you’d rather take your time.

It walks you through locating where you are in this transition, loosening the grip of a role you no longer need, remembering what made you come alive long before your career began, naming how you want to feel each day, and capturing a snapshot of who you’re becoming.

👉 Download the free Who Am I Now? guide.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

What does your retirement look like so far? Have you been able to name your fears? Which of the three fears mentioned above sounds most familiar to you right now?