Congratulations? Bon voyage?
I love my family above all else but have weirdly always put my job first. No matter how dire my domestic circumstances, for nigh on 45 years I’ve dragged myself to work. When I was slogging through a brutal regimen of surgery-chemotherapy-radiation, a substitute was hired to fill in for me on days I was too sick to come in—but the sub was never needed. A senior colleague rebuked me for that extreme work ethic: “You don’t have to be Ms. Cancer Super Star, you know.” I’ve had many jobs at Time magazine—proofreading, reporting, writing—but toward the end of my career, I asked to be reassigned to the copy desk so I could have a regular schedule and spend less time traveling. The regularity helped, but it’s been a while since I looked forward to going to work. My current job is not difficult, and since I turned 67, I’ve worked just a day or two a week, but understaffing has made it stressful. So at the end of a close, I’ve felt no sense of accomplishment—but a big sense of shame about...