Enjoying my retirement

The Stoughton Opera House is a historic theater that hosts many well known touring musicians. Local musicians are also booked for a lesser known Music Appreciation series each spring and fall, but because these are at 3pm on Monday afternoons I haven’t had the chance to perform there …. until now. On October 1st I retired from medicine and on October 22nd Big Circle performed at the Stoughton Opera House. The audience enjoyed our music and we enjoyed playing there! It was fantastic and just the kind of thing I hope to do more of in my retirement.

I’m a bit younger than many retiring docs and it causes some eyebrows to go up when I say I’m retired. Just to clarify: I didn’t retire from medicine as much as I retired to music. My job was still very gratifying but life is limited and the end can come at any time. I wanted to fully pursue music before it was too late.

Has the transition been difficult? Not really. The hardest part is coming to grips with slowly losing hard earned knowledge. For years, I worked to maintain and augment my knowledge base and letting that go makes me uneasy. Initially, I had many dreams where I was in the ER or clinic fumbling around not knowing what I was doing. Thankfully, I haven’t had one of those dreams in a while now.

Lastly, what’s retirement like? Lots of practicing by myself, rehearsing with bands, performances, and composing new music. I’m making progress but there still isn’t nearly enough time to accomplish all my goals. There might even be more to potentially learn and absorb in music than medicine. Really. Much like medicine, I’ll never know everything or be done learning. For someone that enjoys learning, that’s the beauty of it.