An outsider? There’s a word I’ve noticed has cropped up more and more frequently of late, both in written and spoken form. That word is outsider. I must admit I’ve never thought of myself in these terms even though I think some retirees come to see themselves in this way.
That said I do see myself in this way in certain areas of my retirement life. I thought it the other night at my Folk Fiddle evening. True, as a guitarist, in what is fundamentally a (the clue is in the name) fiddle / violin group, I am always going to start a few points down.
It would be nice to leave it like this but I can’t because it seems to be a bit more than that. For example, as I was leaving the other night, I said good night, folks or something similar. And do you know nobody said a word. True there were only three people left at that point but even so the lack of response made me feel a bit insignificant. You’re making too much of something very small, you’ll say.
Now if there is one aspect of my retirement life where I feel deeply insecure, then the public performance of music would be that area. So here again I’m several points down before we’ve even kicked off. And then the word outsider kept cropping up and I had one of those eureka moments (but not in a good way). That’s me I thought, I’m an outsider in this world.
Whether labelling my condition in this way was helpful or not I’m not yet sure. I was always very anti-labelling in my job as a psychologist. Although, to be fair, I was only against it where the label didn’t seem to lead to any unique form of response (that you wouldn’t have got without the label).
Without that unique response it seemed to me that the label was somewhere between a millstone and an excuse for the ‘behaviour’ whatever that may have been. And an excuse that actually prohibited a healthy response by the person in question. Healthy, in this case, meaning an empowered / in-control reaction.
And look at me now. How are the mighty (that’s me) fallen. Happily (well kind of) labelling myself as an outsider as if this excuses any further examination of why I don’t feel fully accepted by the group. I mean, what other possible explanation could there be?
True I occasionally have a similar feeling when in the presence of fellow vintners but then they are usually on a different plane to me with their large commercial vineyards, so that’s understandable. In fact I’d go as far as to say that I’m comfortable with their exclusivity. But musically? Well I’m not sure and so not so understandable.
It seems to be a facet of pushing myself too far with retirement challenges. I’ve written about the damage to self-esteem that can occur when I over-reach myself when trying to prove to myself that I am still what you might call (or not) a viable proposition as a retired, somewhat elderly person. Yes, retirement can bring these kind of insecurities if you let it. All of you pre-retirees who wish for retirement, just be careful what you wish for, as the saying has it.
An outsider summary?
So do I really feel like an outsider? The simple answer to this question is, only partially. And by that I mean only in certain aspects of my life, the rest feel pretty good. That’s important because what I’ve done is (another old favourite bit of advice) tease my negative state apart and also (equally important), focus on the positive. I do not believe that at a general level, as a human being, I am an outsider but simply in certain areas of my retirement life, namely those areas where I might be pushing a bit too hard to be, what shall I call it, interesting, there are times when I think, I’m not up to this challenge. But that doesn’t make me a bad person now does it? And the answer to this question is, of course is doesn’t.
PS.I guess you could say that this blog is symptomatic of my approach to writing it these last few weeks. I wrote it a couple of weeks ago and I’m posting it now (and on a Wednesday) because I haven’t written a new one for this week. I certainly feel less pressure in terms of writing with my once a week strategy and it doesn’t seem to have affected my Google ranking which is a bit weird. Who knows what the future holds in terms of my retirement blog or my music come to that.