Three years ago today, I walked out of my school building for the last time.
I haven’t been back.
That surprises some people. There are retirees who stay deeply connected to their schools. They volunteer. They stop in to visit. They attend concerts and retirement parties and district events. They have lunch with former colleagues and keep up with all the news.
I am not one of those retirees.
Part of that is geography. The high school where I spent the last fifteen years of my career isn’t around the corner. But if I’m being honest, distance isn’t the real reason.
The truth is that when I retired in 2023, I needed a clean break.
Recently, I learned that a colleague is retiring. Another librarian, and I found out completely by accident. A year earlier, a librarian I had been hired with back in 1996 retired. Someone asked if I would be interested in attending a dinner in her honor. I said yes, absolutely, and then never heard another word about it until after the event.
I was offended. And a little hurt.
Not devastated. Not angry. Just genuinely wounded.
After twenty-seven years in one district and thirty-seven years in education, I thought someone might think to include me.
What made it stranger was that only a few weeks ago, I attended a district retirement celebration because a friend of mine was being honored for twenty-five years in education. She told me about it, and when I said I’d like to attend to celebrate her, she was genuinely happy to have me there.
The room was filled with names I recognized. Teachers. Administrators. Support staff. People I had worked alongside for years. Some were retiring. Others were celebrating professional milestones. Many of them seemed genuinely pleased to see me.
Not politely pleased. Genuinely pleased.
We hugged. We caught up. We laughed about people, places, and stories that only make sense to those of us who lived them. At one point, several retirees were invited to come forward and share their best advice or the thing they loved most about retirement.
When it was my turn, I said, “I don’t have to get up in the dark anymore.”
The room laughed.
I wasn’t joking.
People expect retirees to talk about travel or hobbies or grandchildren. All of those things are wonderful. But after nearly four decades of teaching, the thing I appreciated most was waking up because I was ready to wake up, not because an alarm clock informed me it was time to begin another carefully scheduled day.
What I didn’t say was that retirement gave me something even more valuable than extra sleep.
It gave me back my choices.
For most of my adult life, my days belonged to other people. Students needed things. Teachers needed things. Administrators needed things. Parents needed things. There were meetings, schedules, deadlines, emails, evaluations, curriculum changes, state mandates, collections to develop, and countless little crises that arose whenever hundreds of people occupied the same building.
Teaching is a profession built on service. That’s one of its greatest strengths. It’s also one of the reasons it can become emotionally exhausting.
For thirty-seven years, I spent my days thinking about what everyone else needed from me.
Retirement gave me the opportunity to ask a different question.
What do I need?
That sounds simple. It isn’t.
I started teaching in 1986. I retired in 2023.
Between my years as a student and as a teacher, I spent 55 years of my life in school.
Fifty-five years.
School wasn’t just where I worked. It was the framework around which my life was organized. My calendar followed the academic year. My vacations followed the academic year. My understanding of time itself followed the academic year. I measured my life in Septembers and Junes.
There is something profoundly strange about stepping away from a structure that has shaped your life for more than half a century.
I don’t think people outside education always understand that.
When a teacher retires, we don’t simply leave a job. We leave a community, a rhythm, and an identity that have been with us since childhood. Even before we became educators, we were students. School was the backdrop of our lives for decades before it became our profession.
Perhaps that’s why finding out about retirements after the fact bothers me more than it probably should.
It’s not that I need an invitation.
It’s not that I need recognition.
It’s not even that I particularly miss being there.
I don’t.
The last years of my career were extraordinarily difficult. Education changed. Expectations changed. The public’s perception of teachers changed. COVID intensified every existing challenge and introduced new ones. By the time I retired, I was tired in a way that had very little to do with physical exhaustion.
Walking away was the right decision.
I have never doubted that.
I love the life I have now. I write. I coach authors. I spend time with my family. I travel. I say yes to lunch on a Tuesday afternoon. I drink my coffee while it’s still hot.
I’m happy.
But happiness doesn’t erase history.
Fifty-five years is not nothing.
You don’t spend fifty-five years inside a world and walk away without carrying pieces of it with you. Even now, three years later, there are moments when I discover that part of me still assumes I belong to that community. Part of me still expects someone to think, “We should let Jeannie know.”
Maybe that’s why being left off the retirement grapevine stings.
Not because I want to go back.
Not because I regret leaving.
But because every now and then I’m reminded that retirement isn’t a single event. It’s a gradual process of learning where you still belong and where you’ve quietly become part of the past.
Three years later, I’m still figuring that out.
I'm Jeannie Moon—a novelist, retired teacher-librarian, author coach, rabid hockey fan, wife, mom, and nana. Around here, you'll find stories about writing, books, hockey, creativity, second acts, pop culture, and the beautifully messy business of figuring out life as we go.
The bit about the grapevine is the one that stays. Not the grand exit — you prepare yourself for that. It's the smaller moments that catch you out: the realisation that the community has quietly rerouted around your absence, and you only find out afterwards, like reading a newspaper from a city you used to live in.
I spent forty-six years at sea. The ship was the world. When you leave the bridge for the last time, everyone cheers. Six months later, they've forgotten which chart you always kept to hand. A year later, a new watch officer has rearranged the logbook system and it works perfectly well without you. This is correct. It is also, somehow, not entirely the point.
"Part of me still expects someone to think, we should let Jeannie know." Three years in and I'm still catching myself in that same assumption. I'm not sure it ever entirely leaves.
Fifteen years into retirement from the post office, my favorite thing is still waking on my own. Not that I sleep later or more, but it's up to me. There are still things I miss, people I miss, but I have loved being retired. You've said this so very well. Continue having a good time!