How do we define what we do all day? When does a hobby become a job? (I’m talking to you lucky folks who get to make a living at what you enjoy doing most in the world, every day). Have you ever heard an interview with an actor? I think more than any other profession, these are the people who seem to enjoy their careers more than anyone else. Okay, you who love driving your big rig, bestowing new hearts on desperately ill people, ensuring that plaintiffs and defendants receive a fair shake in the courtroom, I’m sure some of you love your jobs.

Or maybe you work at a tulip farm. As you root around in the earth, you’re thinking “ I can’t believe I get paid for this.” So I know it’s not just artists whose passion is their work, and vice versa. Let’s just say that some have been fortunate – or maybe even strategic – enough to meld their passion with their need to pay the mortgage and the grocer.

And then we retire. Whether joyfully, anxiously, ambivalently, or obligatorily due to Parkinson’s or some other chronic condition, our days of paid employment are behind us. I remember the last several weeks of my working life, when making it through a Zoom meeting while experiencing some serious Parkinsonian pain felt as if I’d run a marathon – cue Chariots of Fire theme.

Thankfully, those daylong bouts of pain are in the past (though possibly in my future, but we won’t go there).

The internet is awash in definitions of “job and” “work.” Here’s one I found in my search for a distinction between the two. The phrases Job and Work are sometimes used similarly yet have different meanings. A job is a defined position or task that a person does for monetary compensation, whereas labor refers to the activities that a person engages in to attain a certain objective or outcome, regardless of whether or not monetary compensation is involved jp.

And what exactly does this have to do with me? Or you for that matter?

I’ve recently undertaken a couple of projects that feel like work, in a surprisingly not negative way. And you’re looking at and reading one of them right now.

I’ve been asked countless times why I’ve decided to write a blog, and especially, why one whose subject is the health condition that’s been visited upon me – my Mr. P, my Parky, my Parkinsonian friend, PD, and I’m sure I could come up with some more cute/dumb monikers for the monkey on my back but I’ll skip it for now.

My retirement plans were similar to those of many who’d recently shed the trappings of employment. Delete passwords to Slack, Teams, Workvivo and (I swear I didn’t make this up), Happeo. Hello bookmarks on hiking vacations, best Youtube chefs, and on-line courses for “How to Write a Broadway Musical.” In other words, all the pastimes you just didn’t have time for during your life of “work.”

If there’s a better use of the term “bite on the ass” than being stricken with Parkinson’s – or any major health issue – on the cusp of retirement, I don’t know what it might be so I’ll just say that it sucks.

So what are you gonna do? Hide under the covers, while praying for the phone call that informs you that you were misdiagnosed? Drink a bit too much? Smoke waaaayy too much weed, and worse, not even enjoy it? (Maybe for me to enjoy the weed more, I needed to have a friend come over and pretend to be the RA who will report me to the dean. Aaah, those towel-under-the-door days of misspent and so much fun youth).

So, the blog. A friend who is well-acquainted with my authorial aspirations and has weighed in on many a lame New Yorker “Shouts and Murmurs” I’ve penned over the years, put it succinctly: “You’re going to write a blog, right?” My response, which hadn’t occurred to me until that moment was “Of course I’m going to write a blog.” And so it began. I wrote, and happily tossed my melange of words into the blogosphere, knowing that at least some number of people would read it, and I’d get a kick out of that knowledge. Maybe even a handful of people would let me know that they’d enjoyed my writing, and that would be that.

Yet almost invariably, the second I revealed my new avocation, my interlocutor would jump in with “What a great service to the community,” “You’re helping tons of people deal with their illness,” and, most grandly, “You’re inspiring people.”

I was surprised by these reactions since, truly, I created the blog largely for my own amusement. (I’ve asked myself how I’d be spending my time had I not started the blog, and there’s no ready answer other than probably writing another mediocre, unpublishable novel). 

Nonetheless, I couldn’t be more pleased to have found an audience, and to have offered people some solace from the discomfort and stress of their illness…and even the occasional chuckle or two.

So is my blog a job, work, or none-of-the-above? On a recent day when I was feeling especially overwhelmed, I told a friend “I’ve given myself a job! And now I want to fire myself.”

I know that writing the blog shares many characteristics with a job, even though I have no boss, no editor, and nary a colleague to remind me about what are known in the work world as “obligations.” There are no consequences if I miss one of my self-imposed deadlines.

If there’s a lesson here for current and future retirees, with or without a chronic illness, it may be this: be ready for the unexpected. Take a chance and follow a new path, even if you’re unsure of its destination. Maybe you can find elements of your former career that can be reconfigured into an enriching and creative new avocation.

The funny thing is that the nature of my current work (this blog, creating the podcast) or job, or whatever you want to call it, is much like what I did in my paid position in non-profit fundraising: developing programs for patrons, locating speakers for events, and of course a fair amount of writing. In effect, I’m doing my old job, the one that I was so eager to retire from. The difference is it’s all on my terms. And I’m so grateful that words of mine might prove useful and/or entertaining.

S U R P R I S E ! ! !

Be prepared. Or maybe don’t be.

P.S. if you’d like to join a focus group to critique a draft episode of my forthcoming podcast, please get in touch at andib88@comcast.net and please be sure to include your name and email. If you respond in the blog comments without that info, it appears to me as “anonymous” with no name or email. Thanks.

Recommendations

Two by Barbara Kingsolver

Demon Copperhead (I keep wanting to call him Demon Copperfeld.)

Few authors could borrow from the master – Dickens – as winningly as does Kingsolver, to fashion a coming-of-age novel that features football, opioids, the American foster care system, and teenage romance. It’s less dark than it sounds thanks to the engaging voice of its eponymous protagonist. It’s David Copperfield with a soupcon of Holden Caulfield.

The Poisonwood Bible

An evangelical Baptist minister drags his family of four daughters to the Congo in the late 1950’s, Thirty turbulent years follow, as we track each family member’s personal journey.

You can help me spread the word about what it’s like living with PD. Thanks.