Michael Skapinker is an FT contributing editor and author of “Inside the Leaders’ Club: How top companies deal with pressing business issues”When my 34 years on the staff of the Financial Times came to an end, I bristled when people asked about my “retirement”. I have since discovered that others my age also resent the word.
Why? First, because we dislike ageing. Baby Boomers were the generation that was never going to grow old. The music we listened to expressed our horror at the prospect. “Will you still need me, will you still feed me when I’m 64?” the Beatles’ lyrics went. Simon and Garfunkel sang: “Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a park bench quietly? How terribly strange to be 70.” Yet here we are. Those of us born into the population bulge that followed the second world war are now in our sixties and seventies.
A second reason I resisted the R word is that I had no plans to stop working. I had begun preparing for my post-FT life several years earlier, spending evenings and weekends training to become a counsellor, with the hope of helping others deal with their career dilemmas. When the time came to leave full-time journalism, I discovered my bosses were happy for me to continue contributing articles and teaching in the executive education business I had helped set up. So I have settled contentedly into a three-part career of writing, lecturing and counselling.