Personal

If not now, when?

by reestheskin on 12/02/2020

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I have lots of thoughts about why and when I retired (from paid employment). And I do not feel able to dismiss them, nor not introspect on them. The following is a from the ‘The Daily Stoic’ (a retirement gift from Caroline M). Apposite.

Is this the life I really want? Every time you get upset, a little bit of life leaves the body. Are these really the things on which you want to spend that precious resource? Don’t be afraid to make a change – a big one.

A working life

by reestheskin on 17/01/2020

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I don’t like the work-life balance meme. I know what it means, but I never wanted it. Medicine was once talked of as a vocation, and when I was a medical student I can remember many doctors who clearly believed so as well. Neonatologists who appeared to live on the special care baby unit; surgeons whose idea of Christmas day was to do a ward round and bring their children with them; and ‘be a paediatrician and bring up other people’s children’. The job was not just any job. I remember the wife of one professor who appeared on the ward when I was a houseman very late one night. “Had I seem the professor, her husband?” I had: I saw him there most evenings when I was on call. On this night, for whatever reason, she had accompanied him. Sadly for her, he had forgotten, and gone home without her. Thales and the well.

For me being an academic was a ‘calling’. A grand phrase, I know. But it has for most of my career been a way of life beyond the paycheque. I believe in the academic ideal, but increasingly fear the institutions no longer do. For me, home and office were not distinct. I vaguely remember — and it is quite possible I am mistaken here — that my first Professorial contract at the University of Newcastle stated ‘that by the nature of the work no hours of work are stipulated’. As my children would testify, weekend mornings were spent in the (work) office, and the afternoon in the gym and pool with them.

I retire* in the near future, and I face a practical problem. Much of my ‘work’ is at home — books and papers of course, but also the high spec iMac Pro that I have used to produce videos, alongside video cameras and lights. On the other hand, my office is full of things that strictly speaking are personal, in that I bought them with my own money rather than with a univeristy purchase order. But my work space — measured in square metres if not mental capacity, I hope — is diminishing. A domestic negotiation is required.

*From paid employment, not from my work.