I have no idea why it is taking me so long to write this post, which I started back well before Christmas. Perhaps it is because I have been working on a lot of drawings. That prioritizing will make more sense in what I believe will be the last few paragraphs of this ramble.
OK, you are meeting some folks for the first time. The specifics of the situation are largely irrelevant. It can be anything, social, professional, whatever. You choose what makes sense in your life. Inevitably someone will turn to you and say, “So (insert your name here ____________) what do you do?”
For most of my life - at least for the last 45 years - that was an easy question, “I teach communication at NC State University.” Nowadays, it is a far more nuanced issue. The cheap and easy way out is to simply say, “I’m retired.” Chuckle, and change the subject, usually with “How about you?” The clever adversary will return the volley with “Me too.” Then the two of you stare at each other, playing a swift game of Sherlock Holmes. Neither of you come up with “I can tell by the callouses on the fingers of your left hand that you play a stringed instrument, and the flakes of rosin under the fingernails on the right hand would suggest the violin, or perhaps a cello? The fact that you are wearing formal wear to a barbecue would rule out bluegrass fiddle.” So we may find ourselves stuck with “How about those (insert the name of some college or professional sports team from the immediate neighborhood here.) _________?” The problem with this ploy is twofold: first is that your new acquaintance is an ardent fan of said team and launches into a long a intricate description of the strengths and weaknesses of the Alleycats or whomever, or, two, s/he simply replies “I don’t really follow (insert name of the sport you had chosen here) __________.”
To which you glibly respond, glancing over her/his shoulder, “Oh, there is (insert any name that comes to mind here) _______. I promised him/her/them I would give him/her/them the name of my therapist. I must rush over and tell them before I forget it. Lovely meeting you.”
You see why it was so much easier when you had an occupation that would at least provide a pigeonhole into which you could be neatly stuffed. A quick tip, don’t lie about your profession. This can lead to the dreaded “me too briar patch” - “You’re a forensic mortician, too!? Where did you train?” “Nairobi!?” “Me too! Is that terrible commissary cook still there? The short one who drank so much and put ghost peppers in the coleslaw?” And so on.
But I have been thinking, who do we become when retirement robs us of our convenient pigeonhole? The pigeonhole isn’t simply a conversational convenience, it runs deeper than that. It pokes at our existential “me.” Who am I, and how have I answered the deceptively simple seeming question, “And what do you do?” I came to realize that who we are is most clearly identified by what we spend the majority of our time doing. I mean other than sleeping, or wishing we were sleeping. Now, I realize that such an assertion does, in many ways, have as many holes as the proverbial Swiss cheese. I mean how many of us actually spend the majority of our waking hours in the activity that we would choose to define us? Before I blush and raise my hand, I need to confess to the significant stretch of time when I - pretty much seriously - believed that a degree in theater would lead to Broadway or the silver screen, I spent most of my time in activities that would fail to really define me. So, that "reality" having failed to materialize, my resultant compromises probably worked out for the best. I really don’t think anyone looks good in ultra-high def. But I digress, let me back up.
I won’t bore you with the years for which my memories are highly suspect and I’ll jump straight to high school. And a bit of a proviso here. The notion that our identity is most clearly defined by how we spend the majority of our time is obviously compromised by the extent to which we have control over our time. So I’m going to suggest that we try to visualize “our time” as a pie chart which we probably first did encounter in high school. If I can steal an example, I’ll stick it in here.
This kind of pie chart let’s us get a better grip on how we really spend time and what portions of a “normal day” are really our own and what portions are controlled by other factors. A few general assumptions:
Sleep. This is a real biggy, and one that seems incredibly variable. Geniuses seem to provide no guidance. Einstein pursued 10 hours a night, DaVinci, 5 and those were broken up into cat naps ranging from 20 minutes or so to a couple hours. So our pie chart would simply record what we do - not some mythical “right” amount of sleep.
Work. Another major slice of the pie, and one that bounces around a lot in different times in our life. I guess I think of it as our job, employment, and for much of our lives this becomes the pigeonhole into which others are prone to stick us. “I’m a senior at Treadwell Community College.” “I’m the CEO of Megabucks Marketing.” Anywhere in there. Once we take care of, and evaluate, those two big slices of the pie, over which we often have little day-to-day control (can we all say “COVID?), we can begin to look at some interesting smaller slices.
It is not surprising that I introduce this pie chart idea just as I turn my attention to high school - an environment that we all, to varying degrees, acknowledge is an environment over which we had little, if any, control. You went or you suffered the consequences. That being said I was incredibly fortunate to attend high school at Springfield (Ohio) North High School from 1965 to 1967 - or thereabouts. During that span of time we had pretty forgettable athletic teams and excellent music and drama departments. John Legend was a 15 year-old grad in 1990. OK, so about a quarter of a century after my class left, and, no we never met, but still. Anyhow, the time that I had control of in high school (which is part of the “work” slice for most high school kids) was spent almost entirely in projects centered in the music and drama departments. I was active in other extra curricular activities but managed to bend those responsibilities to choir, glee club, competitive choral activities, and every play and other drama events I could weasel my way into. Point is this - just about all the high school hours over which I had control were spent on theater and music.
I’m going to stick an emerging pie piece in here. It seems random, but while I didn’t realize it at the time, it would later become important. I was lucky, again, to have been a student - from junior high school through my Ph.D program - before tablet computers were invented. Yet during those years you were supposed to be taking notes, with pen or pencil on paper. I’m mean there is only so much can one “notate” from any lecture - but you need to keep the old writing implement moving to indicate interest and attention. So you doodle. Some might call it drawing. But for me doodling is a more accurate assessment.
This pattern - including the doodling - continued once I went to college. The actual time I controlled in college increased. Naturally I had to find time for required courses, but I could shift those to fit around the courses in my major, theatre. Then there were my rehearsal times, performance times, post rehearsal bull sessions with the director over late night meals. Taken all together those created a significant slice of the pie, but they were elements I had chosen. So this was the pie I chose to eat, and which expanded my pigeonhole - I am a theater major at Kalamazoo College.
Upon leaving Kalamazoo College, and simultaneously realizing Hollywood wasn't in my future, I began my graduate school career during which the primary pieces of the pie I controlled were studying and "grad-student-type" teaching creating very similar pigeonholes: "I'm a graduate student at _____." "I teach communication at ______." And while I didn't realize it at the time, that pigeonhole "I teach communication/media/technology at ______" - with the situational inclusions of "I'm Andrea/Emily's father", or "I'm Susan/Christine's husband" - would come to define my life for the next 50 or so years. They were not always fully inclusive or descriptive pigeonholes, but comfortable enough for most instances.
And now here I am at the interesting age of 3 score and a baker’s dozen age of 73, and I have a come to pretty good idea how to respond to the question “What do you do?” Which really means who are? What pigeonhole can I put you in?
I am, in descending order an artist/essayist/occasional poet. Now remember this moniker is a purely numeric identity. Other than sleeping, I spend more hours drawing than any other activity. After that I spend more hours writing essays that appear on the Wall, and within those writing hours are poems, some of which, but not all, eventually end up on the Wall.
I should also mention that the first two, drawing and writing, are tightly intertwined. While drawing I usually listen to music - often to “music without words” classical or some other instrumental variety. This leaves much of my consciousness free to meander around thinking about ideas I might explore on the Wall. Conversely, while jotting down sentences or poems consciously destined for the Wall I often flash on images, photos, and whatnot that may find life as drawings. My nightly meditation sessions often call up images, thoughts, etc., that may find life in either words or drawings.
It is important to note that if I made a pie chart of the big three, even excluding sleep, the three would, in all likelihood, not encompass the whole pie. There are lots of little pieces that wolf down pie. Like walking, a bit of tube watching, watching videos on Curiosity Stream, doing dishes, playing with Vito and feeding Vito, grocery shopping, loading the dishwasher, unloading the dishwasher, FaceTiming or texting , heading down in Big Chicago, for plays, museums, etc., all those little things you thought you might retire from but either can’t or don’t want to leave behind.
Furthermore, and actually most importantly, are the beliefs and the philosophy that guide the construction of the writings and drawings that inform the Big Three. They all need to reflect, manifest, support or clarify the world view that had always been flitting around in my head but really began to crystallize with writing of The God Chord: Physics in the Landscape of the Heart back in the mid-to-late 1990s. Although that book never presents the Distilled Harmony theory, my occasional scanning of early drafts reveals the first suggestions of the quartet that will eventually come to comprise Distilled Harmony; Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity, and Oppose Harm.
Hence, in answer to the question, "So what do you do?" I should respond "I'm an artist/essayist/occasional poet." to which the questioner usually responds with one of these: a) A blank stare. b) "That's interesting. I'm a __________", or c) Oh, "there's __________. I promised s/he them I would give them the name of my therapist. Must run. Nice meeting you."
But, truth be told I usually say, "I'm retired. You?"
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