I’m closing in on retirement. Although I’m still nominally employed until August 31, I’ve been effectively retired since the end of May when my “period of irresponsibility” began. In spite of that, I’ve felt busier than ever — and somewhat resentful of it. Today, I had an insight that helped me explain why.

For thirty years, my time has not been my own. In return for a modest wage and benefits, I accepted responsibilities to conduct various programs for my employer. As a faculty member, I was effectively never on the clock. (I have worked jobs where I needed to punch a clock, so I’m intimately familiar with what that’s like.) Instead, I agreed to take responsibility for various projects (like set up and manage a computer center, provide software resources to faculty, teach classes, coordinate committees, etc). Throughout my career, this often meant checking email and messages beginning in early morning (indeed, around the clock) and being willing to work very long hours when necessary. Even my normal working hours represented a substantial commitment of time.

I generally aimed for around 50 hours per week. It was hard to count exactly. And a lot of what I did overlapped with my personal interests, so it wasn’t clear how much of my research, about technology say, was solely for work and not something I might have done on my own anyway. But it was generally a lot more than 40 hours a week and I tried to not let it grow to 60 hours a week. (A lot of faculty report working 60-65 hours per week). And, even though I wasn’t being paid during the summer, I was usually extremely busy then working on updating computer lab hardware and software, supporting curriculum development, or even conducting tropical field biology.

Over the past several years, I have needed to devote more and more hours to elder and family care needs. Of course, when my kids were little, I spent a huge amount of time on parental care. While I was finishing my dissertation, I was also caring for an infant. Those days were long indeed. But, between the time my kids started school and quite recently, my non-work time was my own. Recently, however, that’s changed.

Now, I find that I’m spending something upwards of three or four hours per day devoted to family care issues, doing things for other people: fixing meals, taking walks, washing dishes, doing laundry, going on doctor’s visits, etc. I was already doing this before I effectively retired, too. But I noticed recently, I felt like I was resenting it more. I think I’ve now realized what it is: I think, even before retirement, I’ve been taking this time from my “work” time. Since my job responsibilities changed and since I went to half time, I was spending less and less time on work anyway. And that was the time I was mentally redirecting to these other activities. But now that I’m no longer employed, that time feels like MY time that I’m having to give up.

Mental accounting is funny.

Now that I know what’s going on, I think it will help me move on and begin enjoying my retirement more — even if it’s not just my time.