Today, we bring you our interview with Ronni Bennett, as you can remember from our prior post about her, Ms. Bennett runs a popular blog ‘Time Goes By’. Today we have the pleasure to bring you an exclusive, candid interview with her. We will be publishing the interview in two parts, with the first part being published today. And the second part will be published in the next couple of weeks. So without much ado, here goes….

Boomer411: WHAT IS IT LIKE TO TRANSITION FROM A FULL-TIME WORKING PERSON TO A FULL-TIME ELDER WHO IS WORKING?
Ronni: Some people plan for the day they will retire from full-time employment; I was forced into it.

When in the summer of 2004 at the age of 63, a group of about 20 of us were laid off from the website of a well-known IT research firm, retirement didn’t cross my mind. But as months of job searching turned into a year and my young colleagues found work while I could barely get interviews, I had to do something about the outflow of money.

It was a wrenching decision to sell my home in Greenwich Village and choose a less expensive town to live in. I had tinkered with the idea for several months, but when I finally determined it was my only choice, I wept for three days.

The next year was taken up with preparing my New York apartment for sale, marketing it, finding a new home to buy in Portland, Maine, and making the actual move. During that time, I also continued to write the blog I had started late in 2003, and continued to do so as I settled into my new home.

I like to say that the blog has become an eight-day-a-week job. I put more time into it than was ever needed at paid jobs I held through 45 years. And I enjoy it more. To my marked pleasure, the subject of aging has become my passion and to my satisfaction, the blog has become influential.

So for me, except for leaving the city I had intended to die in, there was hardly a transition at all. I didn’t know when I began the blog that it would become my “job”, but it allowed me to segue from paid employment to (so-called) retirement with barely a hiccup.

Boomer411:WHAT ISSUES ARE THERE IN LEAVING THE WORKFORCE AND HOW DID YOU ADDRESS THEM?
Ronni: Although there are others, the crucial ones are finances; living arrangements; planning for the possibility of failing health; and determining what you will do with your remaining life which, with increased longevity, can be another 30 years.

Finances: Although I had been derelict through my working years in planning, I benefited from the housing boom when I sold my New York apartment. I bought my new home for less than a fifth of the New York sale price (and much larger too) and invested the rest. In 2006, I became eligible for Social Security benefits and with some small income from gigs associated with my blog, I get by fairly easily without touching my investments. I require so much less than when I was working.

Living arrangements: Some people downsize when their kids leave home. Others choose to move to warmer climates. Moving to a new city is a challenge in finding friends. Until retirement, I don’t think many of us understand how important to our social lives is the daily interaction with colleagues who become our friends or through whom we meet others.

Attending community and political meetings, places of worship and joining organizations of interest are good ways to begin making friends in a new city. You must do the reaching out yourself.

Health: Although U.S. culture does not much admit to the physical and sometimes mental decline that come with aging, I promise you it will happen to some degree if you live long enough. So it is important to decide how you will deal with those issues when they appear. Although I’m aware of the need, particularly due to my blog, I’ve been derelict in making those plans beyond knowing that money I have set aside is there for me. This is, however, NOT the way to do it and it’s on my fix-it list.

Filling the remaining years: There are as many choices for this as there are retired people. Start a new business. Volunteer. Travel. Follow up on interests and passions there was not time for in working years. And although elders are harassed from all sides these days to partake of “active aging” (whatever that is), I think if someone wants to sit back in their rocker and ponder the state of the world or whatever, that is not a failing. Most of us have worked hard for 40 years or more.

My blog takes all my time and for now I am happy with that. If the time comes that I am not, I will follow my instincts wherever they lead. There is so much to know and do that it is time to fulfill those interests that is the issue, not the reverse.

Boomer411:WHAT IS YOUR BLOG, TIME GOES BY, ABOUT?
Ronni: The simplest explanation is the blog’s subtitle, “What it’s really like to get old” with the emphasis on “really”. The United States is a culture of youth, and unless you can take the time to dig deep, it is hard to find anything about aging that doesn’t focus on decline, debility and disease.

But that is simply not true. It is – or, rather, can be if you don’t succumb to the entreaties of pursuing perpetual youth – the richest time of life, filled with the fruits of decades of experience, a time of putting behind the striving for material success and considering the ultimate questions of who and what we are and why we are here. No small topic.

At the same time, the realities of aging are not ignored or denied at Time Goes By. We (by which I mean me and the community of readers who frequently comment) confront the difficult sides of aging too, the physical infirmities and the negative stereotypes inflicted on elders by the culture, age discrimination in the workplace, the invisibility the culture confers on us.

Time Goes By means to explore, over time, all aspects of aging, the reality that is mostly ignored in the press and other media who tend to treat elderhood too light-heartedly as if it were just extended adulthood or, at the other extreme, too negatively.

This concludes part 1 of the interview with Ronni Bennett. Part 2 of the interview to come soon….

Popularity: 49% [?]