Guest post from Helen Fallon Helen retired as Deputy Librarian at Maynooth University in 2022.
Introduction
Retirement is a new stage of life which all library staff will eventually encounter. It’s a major transition, comparable to leaving home to go to university or moving to a new country and requires as much or perhaps more planning than working - no job is as flexible and unregulated. At work you have a clearly defined role. That is no longer the case in retirement and it can be quite daunting to begin anew.
Most people are living longer and if you retire at 65 there is a good change you will have at least 15 or maybe 20 years where you can still be quite active. You can view retirement as a new dawn, a time to reinvent or fine-tune yourself according to a template of your own making.
Four years ago, in 2022, I retired from a career in librarianship that spanned over forty years. This blog post distils some of my experiences, reflections and suggestions. It doesn’t refer to financial planning for retirement, something which is crucial to do, long before your retirement date arrives.
Preparing for retirement
You have given service to others for a long period of time. Now is the time to focus on yourself, to do things you have always wanted to do. Explore options. Don’t immediately rush into commitments without taking some time to consider what you want to do, in both the short term (first year) and in the long term (5 years). If you take on commitments very quickly, you risk filling your time up meeting other people’s needs. Plan your retirement in such a way as to ensure your world is broadening rather than narrowing. Having completed your contribution to work, it’s time to enlarge your contribution to your personal life, and to develop interests and activities that appeal to you.
Task 1:
Make a list of things you would like to do or do more of, but don’t have time for at the moment. Be as specific as possible. Date the list and save it. It can be helpful to look back on this when you retire. Your interests may have changed, but there is value in thinking about it and actually writing down some things you would like to do if you had more time.
I recommend Dr Maureen Gaffney’s book Your One Wild and Precious Life, particularly the Late Adulthood section. I found the book very interesting, particularly the different needs of people in relation to structure. A psychologist, she relates the need for structure in retirement back to childhood, and what is termed attachment style. A person with insecure attachment style (possibly a parent is absent or unable to provide for their needs) will need a more structured approach to retirement, than a person who has experience security in childhood. She suggests you don’t view retirement as a completely blank canvas but equally don’t plan to fill the hours from 9 to 5, from Monday to Friday. It’s likely you may spend a good lot of the first year catching up with people, celebrating your retirement and maybe doing some travel you didn’t have time for before. But then you have to ask yourself – what am I going to do for the rest of my life?
Practice your retirement
Try to prioritise non-work-related meaningful activities before you retire. Allowing these activities to take up more space in your life will ease the transition. I’m interested in relearning the Irish language. A few years before I retired Maynooth University offered Irish classes at lunchtime to staff. I did this for two years and got my school Irish to a reasonable level. Since retiring I’ve done two courses with Conradh na Gaeilge and gone to the Gaeltacht. I think it helped that I had undertaken the refresher at lunchtime with work.
Task 2
Write down the answer to these questions.
- How do you find meaning at work?
- How much of your identity is tied up with work? (Identity doesn’t remain fixed but changes as your life develops).
- What roles do you play in your life?
Finding Purpose in retirement
Identify a passion/something you have a real interest in.
If you don’t have anything specific try a few different things. Look back on your childhood, was there anything you wanted to do/be?
I’d been writing down the years, a mixture of academic and creative writing. I made a decision to focus on creative writing after retirement. I’ve also decided to focus on poetry, and the occasional blog post and memoir article.
What are your priorities? Chances are you have been part of a three-year strategic plan at work. For that activities had to be prioritised. Priorities were in line with organisational values. For your retirement your priorities need to be in line with your personal values, and goals will have a different focus to work, with perhaps less emphasis on outcomes. The book Your Best Year Yet by Jinny Ditzler, while not specifically related to retirement is very good on goal setting and identifying your values and the key areas in your life. Susan Reid’s Re-Visioning Retirement: A Workbook provides detailed writing activities to help align retirement with vision, values and purpose.
Volunteering
Across our career we learn to manage ourselves, including dealing with difficult situations and working as part of a team to provide service to our library communities and increasingly beyond. We leave the formal world of work with an excellent skillset and a strong service ethic, both of which would be very valuable in the voluntary sector. Age Action co-ordinates training on using iPhones/tablets etc and they often look for volunteers to deliver training in libraries. Failte Isteach is well established, again through the library network, as a space for conversational English with new communities and they look for volunteers to facilitate groups. Library staff have skills in sourcing information which is extremely valuable in lots of different contexts.
Consider whether you want to make a regular commitment or a once off effort. I don’t want a regular commitment to be in a particular place, as I like to be free to travel. I’ve been involved in fundraising for books and stationery for a prison library in Malawi, where a relative served as chaplain. I’ve worked in Africa and enjoyed this project and the fact that it is time limited. I’ve also done occasional sessions with different groups on writing poetry.
Health
Prioritise your health and wellbeing. Hopefully you are in a reasonably good place health wise. Keep active. I swim and walk most days. I also find gardening very good for my wellbeing, and enjoy spending time with family, relatives and friends. I don’t have the energy I had ten years ago, but my enthusiasm hasn’t waned. I now accept I have to pace myself and not take on too much. Chances are you will have friends of a similar age to you. I try to limit health-related discussions when I meet up with friends. The reality is we are all growing older and health issues arise. It’s important to be positive and enjoy the present time. In his book Retirement: the Psychology of Reinvention, Kenneth Shultz writes “the most contented people tend to be those who value what’s good in their day-to-day experiences, rather than fixating on the signs of aging…wellbeing depends partly on staying positive and finding joy in small things.”
Making Connections
In his book Flourish Martin Seligman identifies three things necessary for wellbeing – connection, engagement and sense of purpose. The workplace is a community. When you retire you still need to have a sense of community. While I’m in the Maynooth University retirement group, and enjoy meeting former colleagues through this, and occasional attendance at events in the Library, I think it is important to develop new networks and friendships. Otherwise, you risk having tired conversations about the past.
I miss the intellectual stimulation of working in a university. It was a very exciting place to work, with lots going on. I attend courses from the Irish Writer’s Centre and online from time to time and also attend poetry readings, do historic walking tours of Dublin and other events. I’m meeting new people who share my interests and from that I get some of the stimulation I used get from work. When I was working there were always people to have a coffee and a chat with. In retirement I have to schedule meetings for coffee and lunch so there is more planning involved.
Task 3
What transitions have you experienced in your life?
How have you built connection into your life?
Conclusion
The good grounding in information technology and social media I got throughout my career has been of immense value to me. I can keep up to date with events locally and nationally and participate in face-to-face events and online. There’s a fabulous range of podcasts and it’s possible to learn a lot free of charge. Going forward I really want to keep those skills up to date.
Planning for retirement is vitally important. It’s good to spend some time exploring and indulging yourself the first year, possibly travelling and meeting up with people to celebrate your new freedom, then settling down to a flexible routine and to retired life in the second year and beyond. Try something new rather than sticking with the things you feel comfortable with. It’s important to be growing and learning at all stages of life.
In autumn 2026 four years will have passed since I left the library world. It’s been an interesting time and something I still appreciate is enjoying the weekend and knowing I don’t have to get up and go to work on Monday morning.
Some websites I find useful.
The Irish Writer’s Centre.
https://irishwriterscentre.ie/
The Munster Literature Centre
https://munsterlit.ie/
Poetry Ireland
https://www.poetryireland.ie/
The Museum of Literature Ireland has a wide range of exhibitions and events and a nice café.
www.moli.ie
The National Library of Ireland mailing list is really useful for the broad range of events (both in person in Kildare Street and online) and they are all free of charge.
https://www.nli.ie/
Public libraries run writing and reading clubs and they are free. I’ve signed up for the mailing lists for my local library and neighbouring libraries in Kildare.
Royal Irish Academy (interesting guest lectures)
https://www.ria.ie/library/
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