Dreaming of Encore Careers

I decided I wanted to be a doctor when I was about ten. There was not a lot of thoughtful consideration given to this decision. I am fortunate that it turned out just fine. As I approach the time when I will need to consider an encore career, I am looking forward to being more intentional about the decision. I frequently describe what I plan on doing next. The beauty of these claims is that nobody is going to hold me to them, and I don’t even need qualifications for the fields I name. Here are eight jobs, organized by theme, that I am currently considering.

City of Chicago

1. The first job doesn’t actually exist, but it should. I would like to be hired by the City of Chicago as a Retrieval Specialist in the Department of Bicycle Reuse and Recycling. As I imagine it, the city would provide me with a really cool pickup truck — decorated with an insignia that ingeniously combines the Chicago flag and a bicycle1 — and a really powerful bolt cutter. I would drive around looking for abandoned bikes. Once I identified those with flat tires, rusted chains, and missing wheels, I’d clip the lock that held the bike to a rack, a pole, or a fence and throw it in the back of my pick-up.2 Back at the garage, these bikes would be fixed up (certainly as part of a bike repair training program) and given away or sold off for scrap metal.

2. Little boys frequently get obsessed with the vehicles that keep our cities moving.3 I’ve watched kids marvel at fire trucks, garbage trucks, and street drain cleaners for hours. One of my son’s first days of nursery school was made easier when a bevy of firetrucks arrived at a building next to the school. The boys, many of whom were still struggling with separation anxiety, were completely distracted by the trucks. I’ve always been enamored of the trucks that Chicago uses to clean the beaches. It would be a treat to get to do this. I am worried, though, that this job seems to already be under threat by robot replacements.

Art History

1. At the end of my sophomore year of college, I decided between chemistry and art history as a major. A mentor pushed me over the line toward chemistry, arguing that I could study art history for the rest of my life. Still, I took one art history course each semester for the remainder of my college career. On days that I questioned my whole college-medical school-residency-fellowhip-academic physician trajectory, I imagined combining my chemistry and art history training to become an art conservator. Now, at the end of my career, I think about rekindling this dream. However, now, instead of wanting to be a professional, I want to be an underling. I dream about spending days up on scaffolding in damp old Italian churches, cleaning and conserving frescoes.

2. If I can’t spend my days in Italian churches, how about American museums? I’d love to work as a museum docent. I would specialize in tours just of the art that I like with groups of nonjudgmental people, who already know about the art, and therefore would not be disappointed if they didn’t learn much.

Medicine Adjacent

1. Of the whole list, this is the one encore career I am likely to do because I have already started it. If you’re anything like me, when you read a person’s Wikipedia page, you always read the death section.4 I am annoyed that frequently, the description of the circumstances of a person’s death is medically illiterate. These days, I rewrite these whenever I happen upon them. I change “died of a blood clot in the lung” to “died of a pulmonary embolism” or “died of prostate cancer and bone cancer” to “died from metastatic prostate cancer.” In retirement, this will become a full-time job.

2. In a similar vein, I wouldn’t mind being employed by media outlets to proofread health science stories. My job would be to clean up the language so it would not offend me when I listen to otherwise well-reported stories. (Writing this, I don’t think I would succeed at this job, as I’d constantly end up critiquing the health churnalism that we are all fed.)

3. The final medicine adjacent encore career is so difficult, I could never really do it. Richard Lehman was a bit of a hero of mine. He wrote a blog for the BMJ, in which he summarized, critiqued, and contextualized articles recently published in the medical literature. I always looked forward to these and was impressed by his ability to write something intelligent and original on a wide breadth of medicine. I felt like I reached the apex of my career when he commented on one of my articles. His articles always ended with something about his garden. I’ve attempted similar articles a few times over the years. I even substituted a baseball factoid for his garden factoid. I realized that these articles are remarkably difficult to write, and how easy he made it seem. My efforts only increased my respect for Dr. Lehman.

Quirky Old Man Jobs

1. I am too old, uncool, and insufficiently pierced/tattooed to be a modern-day barista. However, I’d love to work making espressos and cappuccinos (nothing more) in a small, relatively unpopular coffee shop. The shop would be similar to the small cafés found in Italian cities and towns. My customers would drink their espresso standing at the counter, before going about their days. I would get to chat with these people, briefly. There would also be a couple of tables for some old-timers to sit and chat at. There would be no outlets, no Wi-Fi, and cell service would be blocked. Somehow, I would limit the shop to about seven customers at any one time.

   Ideally, I’d also have a small display case from which I could sell off some of my old collections. Want a baseball card from the ‘70s, a dinged-up Matchbox car, a Seiko watch from the ‘60s, or a well-loved leather box? This is the coffee shop for you.

2. The last is the hardest, because before I do the job, I need someone to design an app. Everybody makes a big deal about how bad loneliness is for one’s health, but nobody does anything about it. Someone needs to develop a Tinder-like app for people seeking temporary companionship. The app will need a catchy Tinder/Grinder/Hinge type name. It would be a combination of a dating app and a ride-sharing app. If you wanted to offer up your companionship, you’d enter your address and click through a list of the (strictly G-rated) activities you’d be willing to do. Then, when you are free, you click yourself “available,” and your phone pings when someone wants your company. On the other side, a user feeling a little lonely would come up with an activity, enter it into the app, and BINGO, a match would appear.

   I could see making myself available for a whole bunch of things:

   A walk/run/bike/swim on the lakefront

   Being the 4th in a game of mahjong

   Getting a coffee at a nice shop

   Browsing at a bookstore

   Playing catch with a baseball

   Going to a museum

   Helping garden

   Arguing, good-naturedly, about pretty much anything

   Like my list of loves, I fully expect this list to grow. I’ll reshare the post every time I come up with a new encore career. Do let me know if you develop the app!

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Here are a couple of examples that could be adjusted for the Chicago Bicycle Reuse and Recycling Program.