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You are here: Articles --> 2022 --> Working in retirement
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By Geoff Hart, Fellow, Society for Technical Communication
Previously published as: Hart, G. 2022. Working in retirement. ISTC Communicator Autumn 2022: 24-25.
Having reached a certain age, I’ve begun thinking increasingly about retirement. I still mostly love my work, which involves editing research by scientists from around the world who speak English as a second or third language, and I don’t plan to stop completely any time soon. But each day that passes is one less day I have to do things I love even more, so I’ve begun thinking harder about what to do with my remaining days.
I won’t completely retire, among other reasons because I want to keep my brain sharp grappling with the complex materials I edit in my daily work. I also hope to continue working with authors whose work I love or who I feel are doing really important things that the world needs to hear about. But I’ll also keep working with a few authors for whom I feel a responsibility—authors who really need my help because publishing their work is so important to their career, job security, and prospects of promotion. Nonetheless, I’m slowly referring clients to other editors to free up one or more days per week for my own priorities.
I’m sure I’m not alone in contemplating my transition from full-time work to semi-retired. So I’ve written this article to share what I’ve accomplished, what I’m thinking about my future, and the kinds of things I’m starting to do more of.
I’ve had a productive career. Please note that what I’m about to say is not so much to brag as to point out just how quickly and surprisingly one’s work accumulates. You might be surprised at how much you’ve accomplished if you go through the same exercise!
One simple metric of what I’ve done is the number of manuscripts I’ve helped my authors publish. On average, I edit about one manuscript per day, almost all of which are eventually published. (Sometimes I manage two or three in a day, depending on length and complexity, but let’s keep the math simple. I’m editing fewer days per week than I used to, so over my career, one per day is a reasonable average.) That’s 5 per week. Let’s assume 40 work weeks per year, to keep the math simple and account for vacations. That gives us 200 manuscripts per year. Multiply that by 35 years, and it comes to 7000 manuscripts. That’s a conservative estimate, given that even now, as I’m trying to reduce my workload, I don’t take 12 weeks of vacation. Crikey!
Along the way, I’ve published more than 450 articles and a double handful of books, not including stuff I’ve written just for myself, letters to the editor, and many thousands of (sometimes lengthy) responses to questions in various online forums. At one point, some wag referred to me as the “Geoff Hart autoresponder” because of my habit of answering a question before the electronic ink was dry. By the evidence, I seem to have some difficulty focusing for hours on just one task, and need frequent e-mail breaks keep my brain engaged.
One of my most satisfying professional achievements was persuading the Society for Technical Communication (STC), with help from friends on the Board of Directors, to eliminate their old copyright transfer agreement, which removed copyright from authors who submitted articles or journal papers. In its place, I proposed an arrangement by which STC gained all rights required to publish and archive and republish an article, but reserved all other rights for the author. That seemed somehow more appropriate for a society whose goal was to promote our profession.
Before 2008, I used to travel three or four times per year to present papers at conferences or give workshops to local chapters of professional societies. I’ve even taught (briefly) in London, Bangalore, and Beijing. After the 2008 economic crisis, workshop travel largely disappeared. I still get many inquiries each year to do webinars, but I haven’t accepted; even with greatly improved technology, I get none of the energy with webinars that I used to get from in-person teaching. It always feels like I could be replaced by a video or article with a comments section appended.
How is this likely to change as I move into retirement? Before I begin, a warning: though I’ve done lots of scattered reading on the subject, I’m mostly making this up as I go, and navigating by gut instinct as much as by carefully researched plans. Your path to retirement and beyond may be very different from mine. I’ve written this article more in the hope it will inspire you than in the intent you should use it to create a blueprint for your own plans.
That being said, my plans fall into two broad categories: socially useful actions that I hope will make the world a better place, and selfish actions that will make me happy. I’ll focus on things relating to my profession (writing and editing) rather than the many personal things (e.g., kayaking more, traveling with my wife, long-distance hikes) that I hope to do more of, regardless of whatever professional work I continue doing.
Like many idealists, I want to leave the world a better place than when I arrived. Here are some actions where I’m hoping my skills will come in useful:
Among the actions that I hope will have wider consequences, I’ve begun researching and writing a series of white papers intended to motivate governments and other groups to change in ways that will directly make the world a better place. The first two are a carefully researched critique of government responses to the covid-19 pandemic and a discussion of the challenges facing food security in the modern context of climate change. Both are included in the References section of this article. In addition to making them freely available via my Web site, they’re also free for downloading as a Word file or a PDF file so others can build on what I’ve done. They’re written primarily for a Canadian context, so feel free to modify them so they’re suitable for motivating your own politicians to take action.
I’ve always loved reading “speculative fiction” (aka science fiction and fantasy), and I’ve always wanted to write my own stories and become part of the conversation. In spare moments, I wrote and published a few stories over the years. But in the last 3 years, I’ve begun devoting significant amounts of time to studying and writing fiction. As a result, when I wrote this article, I’d sold 53 stories. Most can now be read on my Web site, or will be available once I’ve found time to upload them. (If you’re curious, I’ve provided a link in the References section.) I’ve got a long way to go to achieve my goals for my writing, but I’m off to a satisfying start.
I won’t give up on writing about technical communication so long as it remains interesting to me. Visit my site and check out the books and articles I’ve written! I’ve got (and I’m not kidding!) another dozen books already started, although for some, “started” means just a few paragraphs to itemize the main points or a preliminary table of contents. Such projects take a frankly astonishing amount of time and energy to complete, and are difficult to fit in around the daily work. As I move more fully into retirement, I hope to have the time and energy to publish a new book every year or two.
J.R.R. Tolkien crafted one of my favorite meditations on moving into an uncertain future:
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
Like Tolkien, I can’t say for sure where I’m going. I can only say that I’ve enjoyed the journey thus far, particularly given all the wonderful travel companions I’ve been blessed to share my travels with. I hope to keep traveling down that road for many years yet, and writing about where I’ve been. I look forward to both the intended and the unintended stops and diversions along the way. Including, probably sooner than I’d like, diversion onto that final way we each must travel alone. But by the time I come to that road, I’m hoping to leave a satisfying body of good works behind me.
Hart, G. 2021. Preparing before the next pandemic: proposals for an action plan based on lessons learned from Covid-19.
Hart, G. 2021. A call for action to improve Canada’s food security in the face of climate change.
Hart, G. Fiction and creative non-fiction.©2004–2024 Geoffrey Hart. All rights reserved.