Writing to Steve Lopez about the psychological hazards of retirement, fellow writer Jim Ricci identifies a loss that has nothing to do with money. Retirement doesn’t merely take away the paycheck, the office, and the deadlines. It takes away the intoxicating little introduction that once told strangers exactly how impressed they were supposed to be.
Ricci had been a writer for a major newspaper. At a party, a restaurant, or some social gathering, he could meet a stranger and casually reveal what he did for a living. Immediately, the temperature changed. A newspaper writer! Interesting. What do you cover? Have I read your work? Tell me more. The profession arrived several seconds before the man himself, carrying a tray of prestige and handing out complimentary glasses.
A successful career does this for you. “I’m a surgeon.” “I’m a professor.” “I’m an attorney.” “I’m a newspaper columnist.” The title performs advance work. Before you have demonstrated intelligence, wit, charm, judgment, or even basic conversational competence, your occupation has supplied evidence that you are somebody. You arrive pre-certified.
This is one of the quieter narcotics of professional life: easy status.
After forty years, you may barely notice you’re taking the drug. The dosage arrives automatically. Students call you Professor. Colleagues seek your opinion. Strangers hear what you do and make flattering assumptions. Your institution provides a recognizable brand, and you get to walk around inside its reflected glow while attributing most of the luminosity to yourself.
Then you retire.
“What do you do?”
“I’m retired.”
Ah.
There is no follow-up question guaranteed.
You have entered Credential Withdrawal Syndrome: the psychological discomfort that occurs when retirement removes the professional title that once supplied dependable doses of recognition, authority, curiosity, and status.
The withdrawal can be brutal because the drug was so easy to obtain. You didn’t have to perform for it every morning. You merely had to remain employed. Your title traveled everywhere with you like a small publicist whispering into people’s ears: This man has accomplished things. Pay attention.
Retirement fires the publicist.
Now you’re on your own.
You meet someone and no institution walks into the room ahead of you. No impressive title supplies instant cachet. You have to establish yourself through the raw materials of personality, intelligence, humor, curiosity, generosity, and whatever conversational powers remain after decades of professional life.
This arrangement would be challenging enough at forty.
At sixty-five, it feels like particularly cruel casting.
You are being asked to perform without your professional costume at precisely the age when some of your equipment is beginning to show wear. Your memory may occasionally refuse to produce a noun. Your best anecdote may take three minutes longer than necessary because you have wandered into an explanatory cul-de-sac involving somebody named Bob. Meanwhile, the thirty-eight-year-old across the table has a fascinating career, excellent hair, and a future containing several decades more than yours.
You may begin longing for the old introduction.
This helps explain why some people remain at work long after the work itself has stopped nourishing them. They say they love the job. Perhaps they do. They say the institution needs them. Possibly. They say they still have something to contribute. Almost certainly.
But Credential Withdrawal Syndrome suggests another possibility.
They like being somebody.
There is no shame in admitting this. Status feels good. Recognition feels good. Being sought after feels good. After spending decades acquiring professional authority, surrendering it can feel less like liberation than voluntary demotion.
The danger comes when we confuse our dependence on status with devotion to work.
A seventy-year-old professor may tell himself that students desperately need his wisdom when what he desperately needs is to remain Professor. The executive cannot leave because the company still needs his leadership. The physician cannot stop practicing because medicine is his calling. The writer cannot put down the column because writing is who he is.
Perhaps.
Or perhaps nobody wants to surrender the little electrical charge that comes when a stranger asks, “What do you do?” and the answer still has pizzazz.
Retirement eventually requires detoxification.
The goal is not to replace one prestige dispenser with another. You don’t retire from being Professor and immediately begin constructing a second résumé designed to prove that Retired Professor remains a Force to Be Reckoned With. That is merely Credential Withdrawal Syndrome wearing resort casual.
You have to tolerate becoming less impressive.
That may be one of retirement’s more difficult forms of maturity: doing things because they are worth doing even when nobody applauds. Read without becoming an expert. Write without needing publication. Exercise without posting the workout. Help somebody who cannot advance your reputation. Spend time with your family. Travel. Walk. Learn. Make things. Become interested rather than interesting.
Eventually, perhaps, the professional costume can remain hanging in the closet without your needing to put it back on.
For decades, the title introduced you.
Now you have to introduce yourself.
Cinemorphosis 
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