Who Are You Without Your Corporate Email Signature?

Hello again!

So, we’ve tackled the existential dread and the scary money monster. We’ve even celebrated the idea of “The Great Unsubscribe” and all the cash you’ll save on sad desk salads. You should be feeling pretty good, right? Ready to coast into that glorious, work-free future?

And yet… there’s another little whisper, isn’t there? A new anxiety that creeps in once the financial panic subsides.

It sounds something like this: “Okay, but… what will I DO all day?”

It’s the question of purpose. And it’s terrifying because for decades, your purpose has been handed to you on a corporate platter, five days, sometimes even seven days a week.

Let's Talk About the Cult of "Mandatory Fun"

I want you to be honest with me. How many of you genuinely “love” your job? I mean, would-do-it-for-free, jump-out-of-bed-on-Monday, this-is-my-life’s-calling love?

A few of you, maybe. And that’s wonderful.

For the rest of us, work is… work. It’s a thing we do to fund our lives. We might even be good at it and quite often feel good about it. We might like our coworkers (most of them, anyway). But let's not kid ourselves. The daily grind is a grind.

And modern work culture is incredibly good at making us forget that.

Think of all the corporate initiatives designed to make you feel like work is your everything. The team-building exercises where you build a spaghetti tower. The motivational posters. The constant talk about how "we're a family here and what our glorious values and purpose are”.

It’s all designed to do one thing: make you believe that the company’s mission is “your” mission. That the office isn't just a place you go; it's a place you “belong”. It’s a clever way to make the 9-to-5 feel more like a calling and less like a transaction. 

But here’s the problem: what happens when the "family" lays you off or you hand in your key card for the last time? What happens when the "fun" is over? If your whole identity is tied up in being "Susan from Accounts" or "Dave, the IT guy," who are you when you're just... Susan and Dave?

The scary truth is, many people retire from their jobs only to realise they’ve forgotten how to have a life. They end up on the couch, scrolling through TikTok or binge-watching TV, because the muscle they used for finding joy outside of a deadline has atrophied.

Your Pre-Retirement Training Plan Starts Now

Here’s a secret I wish I’d learned in my 40s instead of my 60s: You can't wait until you retire to build a life you love.

Trying to discover your passions at 70 is like trying to learn to swim during a tsunami. The stakes are too high, and you’re too overwhelmed. The time to start practising for retirement is “now”, while you’re still in the thick of it.

Think of your life as a pie chart. Right now, "Work" is probably a huge, greedy slice. Your mission is to start shrinking that slice and growing the others—"Hobbies”, "Curiosity”, "Friends”, "Doing Absolutely Nothing”.

And listen, this isn't static. Remember life before you had kids? Your priorities were different. Then the kids came, and your whole world revolved around school runs and soccer practice. Then they became teenagers, and it shifted again. Then maybe they left for uni, and you entered the "empty nest" phase.

Retirement is just another one of those big life shifts. And just like you prepared for the others, you can prepare for this one.

• Try something, anything. Take that pottery class. Join a hiking group. Learn three chords on that guitar gathering dust in the corner. Volunteer at the animal shelter. Hate it? Great! Now you know. Cross it off the list and try something else. The goal isn't to find your forever hobby on the first try; it's to get in the habit of trying.

• Date your interests. You don't have to commit for life. Just take an interest out for a "cup of coffee" and see if you like it. Low stakes, high reward.

• Find your “other” people. Your work friends are great, but you need a tribe that isn't connected by a shared hatred of the office printer.

Building a life outside of work is your real retirement plan. The money is just the funding for it. When the day comes to finally turn off your work computer for good, you won’t be staring into a void. You’ll be stepping into a life you’ve already been building for years.

A life where you are the main character, not just an employee of the month.