Whenever I'm Ready

 

Countdown 

20 March 2026

Dave S came up to me at the 2024 PFW fall picnic. He patted me on the shoulder and asked, "So, when are you going to retire?"

"Huh?"

That was before the Hallucinating Chatbot In Chief and his Ketamine Minions set fire to the NIH budget. 

That was before my boss asked what my long-term plans were. That was before I had an answer.

I've worked full-time since the week before I graduated from college. I worked as a TA and research assistant and outside the lab part-time during graduate school, then left to work full-time again as a lab tech while I finished my PhD, and after. 

In one way or another, I've been a lab grunt in academia for 40 years. 

In January 2025, when the walls started closing in, I sent an email to the university HR folks. I knew that one would qualify for retirement benefits when one's age plus years of service equaled 75. My start date at this university was October 18, 2010. My birthday is in May. Did the university count by years or months, I asked. "Days," they replied. "You qualify on February 2, 2026."

Wait, what? That was 54 weeks away.

That changed things.

Our institute is a big glass box full of nerds. Our office walls and doors are glass. There are dry-erase equations Beautiful-Minding everywhere.  When there was one year to go, I slid my office door closed and, on the inside, began writing a column of numbers: 52, 51, 50... By the time I got down to 1, the ink had nearly run out.

Every Monday morning, I'd slide the door closed and erase the top number. 

When the 50s became the 30s, I had no more idea of if or when I'd bow out, much less what I'd do with the great expanse of free time burning white-hot at the end of it.

"You need a plan," Plain Jim warned. 

"You need structure," Jack cautioned.

"There's always the nap," Rickety said. "Ah, yes, the nap," Pete chimed in.

I don't do downtime. I work. I work out. I lead bike rides. I go on bike rides. I blow glass. I serve on wonky environmental committees. I make jewelry. I do chores. I take pictures of spiders. I blog.

"That's not enough," Jack said. "You'll go nuts in two days."

He wasn't wrong.

I started a list. Where could I volunteer? Should I learn American Sign Language? Photography? Visit every parcel of open space in central New Jersey?

"When I look at the list, I get the heebie-jeebies," I told Plain Jim. "There's not enough there."

I sent it to him. Much to my surprise, and to my great relief, he was impressed by its contents. I felt better.

But still.

I wasn't ready.

I wasn't ready when February 2 rolled around and I erased the 1.

In its place, I left myself another message: "whenever I'm ready."

Then the first university-wide email came: For us peons, a 1% raise for the 2026 fiscal year starting in July. Inflation was something around 3% that day. We were the lucky ones; the exalted ones would get no raise at all.

When the second email arrived to announce impending benefit cuts, I wrote to HR to ask what that would mean for me. All they could tell me was that my unused vacation day payout would drop from 30 days to 20 days if I were to retire after July 1.

I should mention here that there is no retirement pay package at this gold-plated institution. There is dirt-cheap health insurance: I get to continue the plan I'm on until I qualify for Medicare. But that's it. There's no equivalent of a severance package. Not when you're paid by grants, anyway. Health care benefits continue until the end of the month one retires in, but for money, the vacation days are it. I'd been banking mine. I had 37 when I found out about the cut.

The university forced my hand. I decided to retire on June 1. I'd already planned to be on vacation that week anyway.

It wasn't until I picked the date that the other half fell into place. I peppered HR with more questions.

On February 25, I had a chat with my boss. "Remember a year ago when you asked if I had a plan and I didn't?"

"Yeah?"

 "Well, now I do."

"Oh?" He looked somewhat concerned.

"I want to retire," I said, "But I want to stay on part-time after that."

That worked for him. He'd keep me on indefinitely if he could, he said.

HR rules will limit my hours to half-time. I get to jettison the tasks that take up time without being rewarding (think of it as flipping brains instead of burgers for half the department), and peel away my mouse pimp duties to all the people in the lab who actually use the animals. 

I can do the fun work for the big project our lab is starting, earn a little cash*, and then go out and play with all my retired friends.

The morning after I made the decision, Heddy texted me to ask how I felt about it. "Surprisingly unremorseful," I wrote back.

I've felt strangely light ever since. I should ask Dave S about that.

(*There's a part of me that hates the idea that I'll be a part-time gold-digger, slumming it while Jack still works. But with my bird-bones and all, I don't want to spend the rest of my mobile life standing at a lab bench.)