When your husband retires, but you still have a job.

This week, my husband left the company where he was employed for almost 10 years. The same company I currently work for, although in a different division, more or less. It is always hard for me to explain my job, and even more complicated to explain my husband’s job. It is always easier to say we work in the entertainment industry. For people who are genuinely interested, they will often exhibit the same look a dog has when you start talking to them: their head cocked to the side, eyes wide open, and they will usually utter the words “huh” or “uhh”. For those who are curious, I typically have to go into a little more detail, but for our purposes here, I’ll say we work in the entertainment industry. I’m excited for my husband because, quite honestly, I haven’t seen him this happy in ten years, and that is always a really good thing. However, I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I was a little sad. I would be lying if I didn’t tell you I was a little scared. I would also be lying to you if I didn’t tell you that I don’t know how to work at a company where my husband wasn’t on the same weekly Zoom calls. At the end of the day, I have no doubt, zero doubt, that our little family unit will be fine. Maybe even better than fine, because my husband is happy and excited about the future, and when he is happy, the sky is the limit. But I need a little more time to adjust. I need a little more time to figure out my place in this new normal.

We have had this conversation before, you, my faithful reader, but for those new to my blog, I must admit that I hate change. I hate it very, very much. I am fully aware that without change, you can’t have growth, but at 58, I’d like to be done with the growing phase of life. All that being said, my husband isn’t going to be 100% retired. He is an entrepreneur, and I don’t think those people ever fully retire. He is not one of those retirees who are losing their memory, moving a bit slower, or are no longer able to contribute to society; quite the opposite. If anyone knows my husband, they know he already has a lot of ideas and irons in the proverbial fire, and I know that my life won’t change much at all. We both mainly work from home, so he is just down the hall from me in his office. But it will all still be different, and I’m trying to adjust. It’s weird living with an entrepreneur when you, yourself, are not one. I am very much a corporate girl; I like the security of a corporation, even though they are not always so secure. I don’t always understand the entrepreneurial mind and how it ticks, although living with one for over 20 years has certainly given me some insight on that front.

Once people hear that he’s leaving his job, their first comment is usually, “That’s amazing!” and then they will say, “Are you going to take a vacation finally?” I don’t know that we will take any grand retirement vacations, but I do know it will be a vacation to not wake up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and find my husband sitting in a chair on a Zoom with South Africa, Dubai, or Australia. It will be a vacation to sit in our house and watch a movie without having to put it on pause because he needs to take a call from some faraway land about a show whose set is delayed in delivery and whether it will even be there for the show. It will be a vacation just to have dinner without my husband’s phone chiming with a text. And it will very much be a vacation to hear my husband walk over to his studio and produce some music that he has created, or work on someone’s record, or just sit in our family room and play the piano because he can and has the time.

So here I am, almost 60 years old, with a husband who quit his job, and I still have mine. Here I am, at nearly 60, navigating a new phase in my life and cautiously stepping out on the entrepreneurial limb, waiting to see what is next. I know it will all be fine, better than fine, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little scared.