Who Am I Without My Job Title? What Nobody Tells You About Retirement Identity Loss

The first Monday nobody asks what you doThe first Monday after I retired, I made coffee and stood at the kitchen window watching my neighbor back out of his driveway at 7:40, same as always, same stressed look on his face when he's running two minutes behind. I used to be the guy running two minutes behind. Now I was the guy at the window. Nobody called. Nobody needed the numbers by end of day. My phone sat on the counter, quiet in a way that felt less like peace and more like being unplugged from something. I'd pictured this day for years. Not the specifics, just the general shape of it — relief, maybe a little smugness, the sense of having made it to the other side of something. What I hadn't pictured was standing in my own kitchen at 8 a.m. not totally sure what I was for. So what was my professional identity actually built on?Here's an uncomfortable question I didn't ask myself until it was too late to ask it usefully: when someone asked what I did, and I told them, what was I…