For forty-odd years I was the person other people expected to have an answer, which is an appalling way to live and I'd recommend it to no one.
I went to sea at sixteen. I was, at various points, also a firefighter and a police detective, on the theory that if two dangerous jobs were good, three would be character-building.
By the time they made me a ship's captain in 2011 I had achieved a kind of professional numbness that meant nothing surprised me at sea and, unhelpfully, nothing surprises me now either — which at sea is an asset, and in retirement means I once stood in a supermarket for four minutes watching a self-service till accuse me of theft with the calm authority of a small, malfunctioning judge, and felt nothing.
I retired properly in June 2025, having spent the years before that running a marine consultancy that had me in China, Angola, Taiwan and the North Sea more than it had me at home.
I was told, repeatedly, by people who should have known better, that retirement was "the reward."
Nobody mentioned it would also come with an audit — of your usefulness, your status, and the exact moment a room stops listening to you in a way it used to be practically obliged to.
This newsletter is the log of that audit.
It is not advice. I have no six-step plan, no morning routine to sell you, and if I ever open a piece with "here are five ways to," take it as a distress flare and abandon ship immediately.
What you get instead is the bureaucracy that treats retirement like a filing error, the small, targeted humiliations modern technology reserves specifically for people who used to know how to fix things, and the strange, unbothered dignity of a Tuesday when nobody needs anything from you before ten.
Some of it is genuinely funny.
Some of it just quietly says the thing you'd been carefully not saying out loud.
Most days it manages both, which I consider very good value.
WHAT YOU'LL ACTUALLY GET
One piece a day, seven days a week, no free days — which I appreciate sounds like the newsletter equivalent of a timeshare pitch. Here's the honest defence: everything else currently landing in your inbox is already free, and you still haven't read most of it. At least here, someone's asking.
What's inside: the sudden, total loss of workplace visibility nobody warns you about in advance; the specific anxiety of watching money go out with no wage coming in to replace it; technology, which I have decided is now less a tool and more an ongoing test of my dignity, administered daily, with no possibility of appeal; and the low-grade social comedy of neighbours, waiting rooms, and people who have started explaining things to you slowly. It is not, before you ask, all misery.
There is a great deal that's actually rather good about this stage of life — more time than you know what to do with, permission to be curious about something for no productive reason whatsoever, small extravagances nobody's now allowed to raise an eyebrow at — and I write about that too, mostly so you don't conclude I've become insufferable.
IF YOU WANT TO START SOMEWHERE SPECIFIC
One piece did something I still can't properly account for. It was read about 98,000 times and appears to be single-handedly responsible for roughly 5,000 of you turning up, which is either a testament to good writing or proof that a great many people were having a very bad Tuesday at exactly the same time. Either way, start there.
I'm 67 and Just Realized I've Been Lied To About Retirement (the one that started it)
The Identity Collapse No One Warns You About (Part 4): Your Marriage Wasn't Built for This
The Brochure Made It Look Simple: Part II — Neuroplasticity Broke My Brain
The Lie That Ageing Happens Slowly
The Emotional Hangover of a Life Half-Lived
WHAT READERS ACTUALLY SAY
I didn't write any of the following, which is precisely why I'm including them. Nobody gets paid to say nice things about a filing-error newsletter, so treat these the way I do — with mild, ongoing astonishment.
"Thank you for this article. It resonates deeply." — Mary W.
"Obsessed with this. Thank you for writing it. I don't want to learn from someone with three years of experience — I have a hundred thousand questions and I'd like to learn from someone with decades of it." — Jennifer J.
"I'm actually looking forward to it. I'll just be changing my priorities, picking the things I want to work on, and living what's left of my life at a slightly slower pace, not constrained by other people's timescales. Can't wait." — Jon H.
A FEW HONEST QUESTIONS
Is this just misery about getting old? No, and frankly I resent the implication.
Most retirement writing comes in exactly two flavours — relentlessly upbeat, as if ageing were a wellness retreat, or a checklist of things to dread, as if it were a structural survey.
This is neither.
It's closer to what happens if you corner someone who's actually done it and ask them to skip the reassuring bit.
How much of it costs money? All of it, technically — I write daily and none of the days are free, though every piece gives you enough up front to know whether it's for you before any card is asked for. Eight dollars a month, or sixty a year if you'd rather make one decision instead of twelve.
What if I haven't retired yet?
Most of what's in here started well before the actual leaving-do — the sense of being politely edited out of relevance, or the first time a piece of technology made you feel briefly, publicly stupid in front of someone who used to ask your opinion.
If any of that rings a bell early, you're not early. You're just paying attention sooner than I did.
If a piece landed and you're simply not ready to commit to a monthly arrangement — I understand, I resisted commitment for most of my career too — you can buy me a tea instead.
No subscription, no obligation, just a small, one-off acknowledgement that ten minutes of your day went somewhere useful.
