Working Late

Working Late

I’m a Boomer, born at the height of the boom in 1954. I spent my most productive years in a corporate environment, rising up the ladder to become a vice president. This was in my mid-40s. The inevitable mid-life crisis hit, and I realized I didn’t believe in the corporate model any more, that suits were for car salesmen and that meetings were a fidgety hell. What was really happening was I was realizing I’d always be a vice president, and younger men would soon be giving me orders. I did what a lot of men my age are doing; I kicked over the traces, stole my key client and started my own company.

I am Principal now (not president, too vainglorious), no longer vice-anything, but what I really am is a freelancer, no employees but my cats, no assets but my integrity and my computer.

For more than a decade I’ve done most of my real work before lunch in my pyjamas (just like the caricature of the freelancer). After lunch, I have time to nap, and I do. Napping is one of the most civilized things a working person can do to maintain their energy, and it’s no mystery they are popular in ancient cultures that have learned much about work.

After dinner, writing reports and proposals until the wee hours, uninterrupted by phone calls and visits. I find I work best with a hockey game at my elbow, bathed in the frantic noise, but ignoring it except to exclaim “Awrite!” or “Shit!” at the goals. This is true productivity. Working on one’s own schedule, and owning one’s work as a result. When you subtract those parts of the working day that have nothing to do with working, you realize how much time you actually don’t own. Now I own my time, and have no one to blame if I waste it.

This is increasingly the case amongst Boomers. For a number of reasons, they now work for themselves. Some have been downsized out and abandoned the treadmill to younger contestants, others have burned through a career too fast and need to set their own pace. I think it’s Boomer narcissism; those who didn’t get to be the big boss, left to become their own boss, like I did.

Pensions, you say? Well, I’ll deal with retirement income in more detail later, but I don’t have a pension and I don’t know anyone who does. My father had three. I had some RRSPs that sustained me through the worst of the recession. I have 35 shares of Apple stock I’ve owned since Steve Jobs had hair, and I have a substantial house, most of which my wife and I own. And the ultimate retirement accessory, a large motorsailer which I use as my summer office.

Although I made a lot of money in my peak earning years, like a lot of people my age, it never occurred to me to save like my parents did. We had RRSPs, they underperformed and cost too much in fees, and were too easy to raid. For many of us, our house is our pension, RRSPs and retirement fund. My wife and I would own our house by now, but I borrowed against it to buy the boat, which seemed a fair trade-off. At 38 feet, 4 cabins and 2 heads, sleeping seven, it really is a second home at a fraction of the cost.

The grim truth is, summer office or not, I’ll be working until I’m dead, because I can’t afford to retire, and I’m not the only one I know who can’t. Not that I’d want to. I define myself by my work, not my hobbies. I don’t golf, and while I can always make time for sailing, if I weren’t planning, executing and reporting, I’d die of the fidgets. I’m hoping that the sheer mass of aged freelancers will ensure that a 75 year old consultant isn’t that strange a sight in the future as it is now. I just hope there will be enough work for all of us.