Image: Graphic from the Island.is website.
If you find yourself visiting “Island.is” — as I did yesterday — you will learn something about a particular island:
Iceland, a tiny island nation that calls itself by its Icelandic name, “Island”, which I gather is pronounced “Ees-lund”.
“Island.is” appears to be the national government website, and I was there to learn about retirement, a topic near and dear to the hearts of many in my rural home town.
I found myself visiting this website after reading the “Library News” column in the Pagosa Daily Post, written by library director Barb Brattin. She mentioned a useful book, Retire Often: How Anyone Can Take Multiple Career Breaks to Unlock Adventure, Advance Their Career, and Find Financial Freedom written by serial retiree Jillian Johnsrud.
You don’t have to wait to retire, she writes. You can do it in small helpings, regularly and often.
According to library director Brattin, people in Iceland — as an example — switch careers often enough to justify a mention in a ‘Library News’ column about serial retirement and multiple careers.
Living as I do in a rural community where nearly half the full-time population is retired, and where about 30% the remainder is self-employed, serial retirement could easily become a popular topic of conversation.
As it is, the working folks in my home town typically hold down two or three jobs, to make up for the half that hold down zero jobs. So you can actually “switch careers” during any given 24-hour period.
This puts an interesting twist on the idea of retirement. Which job, exactly, are you retiring from?
Ms. Johnsrud claims in her book that certain people would be happier if they constantly and consistently took “mini-retirements” instead of working at the same boring job for 40 years and then entering a boring retirement phase when they are too old to enjoy it. “Mini-retirement” is something like real retirements, but smaller. Like, lasting three to six months, at which point you’re broke and you have to go back to work.
Ms. Johnsrud hosts a podcast called, appropriately enough, “Retire Often”. She interviews people who — appropriately enough — have retired often and thus have experience with the practice Ms. Johnsrud wants us to seriously consider.
The podcast logo:
It’s evident that Ms. Johnsrud associates “retirement” with global travel and recreation, judging by the icons featured in this logo. The purposes for which you would “mini-retire”, then, is not to discover a cure for cancer or to be elected to Congress — the kind of purposes for which I personally would retire — but rather to ski, ride your bike, or take photographs in places where you don’t live and never will live.
Perhaps the place where you live holds no special attraction for you. You’ve been there, done that. You retire, so you can go there and do that.
Like many people, I don’t always believe what I read in books, or what I hear in podcasts. I prefer to read — or hear — “between the lines”. That’s where reality actually exists. In the blank spaces where people hardly ever look.
Between the lines of text on the Island.is website, for example, the web designer has included graphic images that suggest the real story not told by the text itself.
For example, the web page about retirement presents this image:
Obviously, if you retire in Iceland, there are limited activities which which to amuse yourself. You can take walks assisted by ski poles, or you can water indoor plants. That’s about it.
I searched in vain for any indication that workers in Iceland commonly engage in “mini-retirements” or multiple career changes, but I did learn that, statistically, Icelandic workers delay retirement longer than any other European country. This makes a certain sense, considering the dearth of “post-retirement” activities.
Might as well keep working until you drop dead.
That’s what I plan to do.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.