Why Do My Friends Keep Using the R Word?

Is there only one way to escape the work treadmill?

Me, working.

Lately, some of my friends have been suggesting that I’m “semi-retired.” My dentist asked me if I’m thinking about retiring. Even a friend who’s also a client, and therefore presumably knows I’m working, has referred to me as being semi-retired — more than once!

Where do they all get that idea?

I am not retired. I am not semi-retired. I’m a consultant. Yes, I’m working fewer billable hours than before, making way less money, and paying way more for health insurance, thank you very much. But I’m not retired. Any questions?

I admit, though, that retirement has been a hot topic in my world. Several of my friends have retired, some of them my age or younger. Others are considering it seriously.

Is that because my friends and I are lazy? No. At least, they aren’t, though sometimes I think I am. Is it because we dislike our work? No. I have friends who love their work, friends who are quite satisfied with their work, and friends who like it well enough. I don’t think any of my friends actively dislike their work, though one or two dislike their current jobs. I like my work, and sometimes I even get excited about it.

What’s the issue, then?

If you’re on social media at all, you might have come across this viral TikTok video by a young woman who recently discovered the tyranny of the modern capitalist work world:

@brielleybelly123im also getting sick leave me alone im emotional ok i feel 12 and im scared of not having time to live

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Brielle wasn’t complaining about work itself, or about her specific job. She was dismayed by the fact that her long commute, made necessary by the lack of affordable housing near her office, turned her 9–5 job into more of a 7:30–6:30 job — not including time spent getting ready for work or getting to and from the train. That left her with little time or energy for anything else.

Her presentation and delivery, peppered with the word “like,” sounding oddly like a Valley Girl (that’s so last century!), and reeking of privilege, made her easy to ridicule. It’s hard not to sneer at a video like this. Given all the nasty comments about Brielle all over the internet, I’m surprised her video is still up.

But the sad thing about many of the comments is their assumption that because the work rat race is the norm, this young woman should just suck it up and suffer like everyone else. “We had to suffer,” they’re basically saying, “so you should grow up and do it, too!”

Is that a healthy attitude? Or would it make sense, instead, to question the way we work?

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Except for the year when I lived at 16th and T in DC and could walk to work in 20 minutes, my first few hellish jobs all came with long commutes — by the standards of those distant times. Lengthy waits for delayed buses and trains could make the workdays even longer than they already felt.

But in those jobs, the work itself was also a big part of the problem because of the endless boring tasks and inhospitable environments of inspirational posters, cubicles, and fluorescent lights.

What about when the work is enjoyable and you like your co-workers? Even then, long commutes are only part of the problem. Don’t get me wrong — they can be a very significant part of the problem. But our modern American work world suffers from much more than just long commutes.

Topping the list is the pace and relentlessness of work.

Americans work way too much and take less vacation time than people in other developed countries. If you’re lucky, you can minimize the insanity, but it’s tough when everyone around you is overworking. It’s tough when that’s the default and the expectation. It’s tough when your livelihood may depend on it — or when that’s not really true but it feels like it is.

I wrote about overwork almost exactly a year ago, and it’s no accident that I’m on this topic again as we’re nearing the shortest day of the year, a time when we should be slowing down. But our modern work world doesn’t allow that. Instead, it keeps taking, whatever the season.

It’s not just about working too many hours. The pace of most workplaces is frenetic and unsustainable, and everything seems to keep speeding up.

It’s not just about loving our work. Not everyone is able or inclined to follow their passion into a job, and some people may be happy enough just getting a paycheck and finding fulfillment outside of work. But that’s not possible when work demands so much of us and takes so much from us. It’s not possible when there’s no time or energy left in the few hours outside work, as the much-maligned Brielle found.

Even when we love our work, this is no way to live. If we don’t love it, the lack of free time plus the frenetic pace just adds insult to injury.

Friends who have retired early have mostly done so because of the stress of the modern work world, not because they didn’t like their work. There’s the first-grade teacher who got immense satisfaction from seeing children learn to read but couldn’t take even one more year of the oppressive, unsupportive work environment. There’s the IT systems administrator who was dedicated to his work but was done with the stress, which was affecting him physically. There’s the Whole Foods team leader who loved his job till Amazon took it over and took away his autonomy, slashed worker benefits, and made it impossible to hire enough staff.

Does it have to be this way? I don’t think so, but American work culture doesn’t seem likely to change significantly anytime soon.

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My work life improved dramatically at each step after those first hellish jobs: from freelance editing to jobs in publishing, tech, and more recently, clean energy communications.

Did I end up loving my work? Well, I loved parts of it. In my clean-energy jobs I got to do more writing, and I could feel good that my work was in service of helping to improve the world instead of helping rich executives get richer. I felt less like a cog in a soul-sucking machine.

But my jobs were still jobs. Even without a commute, they still occupied a large portion of my waking hours and drained a lot of my energy. It still felt hard to keep up with household tasks, let alone find time for friends, fun, and relaxation.

When I left my last full-time job at the end of 2021, soon after I turned 60, I was looking for a breather and hoping to simplify my life.

As a consultant, I still work. I go to Zoom meetings; I have several weekly ones I attend regularly. I am not retired. I am not semi-retired.

But for the most part, my days are more spacious. I’ve found time to do my own writing, which feels like a luxurious indulgence but feeds my soul and helps me cope with our crazy world.

A few more benefits I’ve gained:

• Freedom from micromanaging bosses and toxic work cultures — I can be selective about the clients I work with and am not relying on just one for all my income.

• A more flexible schedule that allows me to do things like go grocery shopping on weekday mornings, when stores are less crowded. Every now and then I can even go hiking during the week, though I’d certainly have much more opportunity for this were I actually retired — as well as freedom from receiving weekend Teams messages and emails.

• Greater detachment from the stresses of a job; when things get stressful with a client, I can more easily let it go because I’m not as invested in every detail of any single company and it doesn’t consume all my working hours.

My situation isn’t perfect, and work can still be annoying at times and can still keep me from spending my time the way I’d prefer. But it’s pretty good.

At this stage of my life I can get by on a reduced income, but I realize that I’m privileged to be able to do that. I’m lucky to get to feel part of something through my work while also slowing down to a more natural speed of life.

It should be possible — and acceptable — for everyone to do this. It shouldn’t require becoming a consultant. It shouldn’t require retiring — or everyone thinking that you are. Of course, that’s not compatible with our current system of unfettered capitalism, which requires ever-increasing growth and productivity. What will it take for the capitalist treadmill to slow down and let people live in a more natural way?

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Have you found a way to slow down while still working? Let me know in the comments!