What Was I Made For?
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In late January and throughout February of last year, my goal of starting a “retirement blog” began to take shape. With inspiration from Ageless Possibilities, I started meeting via Zoom with a former co-worker, sharing my vision for the kind of site I’d envisioned as a newly retired woman fueled by a desire to reflect, read, research, and write as my purpose in the last quarter of my life. I told her my vision, and she worked her magic with some page templates and taught me how to navigate Squarespace on my own, and by March The Precious Days arrived. Ta da.
I am as new to this blogging thing as I am to retirement. I am a retirement neophyte by some standards — just three years since I left my longtime career in education in June of 2021. For my first year, I took another job as an executive director of a state-level organization for curriculum directors. So I only jumped into full retirement the summer of 2022.
I enjoy my newfound rituals and routines during this time of my life. I tweak them and adjust my attitude regularly. But just when I think I’m truly settling into this retirement thing, a blue funk comes along to cast its shadow. I have to do as much “picking myself up and trying again” as I did when I was working and stressed. I guess no matter what phase of your life you’re in, you’re stuck with one constant…YOU. These temporary funks are just how I roll. They are part of who I am, so OF COURSE they are going to be part of my retirement years. Turns out retirement life can be just as ordinary or complex as the ol’ work life you left behind, despite or maybe because of the new found time on your hands. And I do dig a hole for myself from time to time. But unlike during my work life, when the sheer demands of the job or a trajectory of change might snap me back into the “Let’s go!” motivated me, now it’s often the most unexpected things that throw me a rope to climb out of myself.
Case in point: The 2024 Grammy Awards and Barbie.
I watched the Grammys this year for the contemporary music, the sheer energy of it, and well, yes, to see Taylor Swift win some awards. But what knocked me out was Billie Eilish singing, “What Was I Made For?” I’d heard the beginning of that melody as the soundtrack to countless IG Reels and Tiktok videos, but I hadn’t really heard the lyrics until the Grammys. When I heard those first four lines: “I used to float, now I just fall down. I used to know but I'm not sure now. What I was made for…. What was I made for?” I welled up. That’s it! That’s how retirement can feel! You work decades at a career, and you do your best to get really good at it. There are accolades and respect, and you feel you’ve truly found your purpose. As the decades accrue and you’re well into your sixties, you start to look forward to the time you’ve earned…to retirement. And then, there it is, more suddenly than you’d wished for. No turning back for you, you’ve decided. After the euphoria of not going off to work, slow mornings, and pretty much doing as you please, you start to feel like you are moving through life on very wobbly legs. And the question smacks you in the face: “What was I made for?”
Oh my. The song was leaving me so raw. How did this Gen Z pop icon know so much about the deepest feelings of this old Boomer? As I listened to more of the lyrics, the emotions continued to build: “'Cause I, I, I don't know how to feel. But I wanna try. I don't know how to feel, but someday, I might. Someday, I might.” And it may not have been quite this dramatic, but those lines actually snapped me out of the funk I’d been hanging out in, sometimes languishing in since the start of the new year (maybe longer if I’m honest), and I may have actually whispered to myself, “I want to try.”
After a good cry, I had to remind myself that Billie Eilish didn’t write that song for retired women in the final third (or quarter) of their lives; the song was written for … BARBIE! I just had to know more about Eilish’s songwriting inspiration for those lyrics. In an interview in People, Eilish said before working on the song for the Barbie soundtrack, she wasn’t writing anything that felt good to her, and she started to worry about it a bit. Had the creativity well dried up? But they persevered. She explained that as she and her brother, Finneas, wrote the song, she wasn’t actually thinking about herself at all, just the character of Barbie. But as she listened to the song, she came closer to the realization that she’d been writing about herself without meaning to. Eilish said it “felt as if you woke up and someone had taken a photo of you sleeping” (CNN,). Exposed. Vulnerable. Relatable. Just the way I felt.
I am infinitely grateful to Gen Z singer/songwriter Billie Eilish for giving voice to some of the feelings I have about my Great Retirement Experiment — which is sometimes what it feels like—so much trial and error, so many unintended results. Ultimately, the song helped me the same way it helped her. By pushing herself to re-engage with her own creativity, she rediscovered the authentic creative self that had “fallen down.” Now I am not comparing myself or what I do on this tiny blog or during my ordinary retirement days with the phenomenal talent of Billie Eilish, whose music, veganism, and politics I love. But I am testifying that I can 100% identify with the feeling of a lack of purpose and direction she was experiencing as the first line of the song just spilled out of her. And the rest, as they say, is Grammy history. “The rest” for me was just the inspiration I needed.
But this story didn’t end with the Grammys and a little online research about Billie Eilish. My blog readers know I often use music and lyrics for my own creativity and personal reflection. I had to know: What was it about Barbie as a movie character that required a song with those lyrics for her? After all, it’s a song about a very personal version of a world falling apart and having to ask, “Now what?” A song like that for a fun doll? What had happened to Barbie? What caused that painful mix of confusing emotions swirling around a vortex of fear and longing, pushing her to the point where she would: “Think I forgot how to be happy. Something I'm not, but something I can be. Something I wait for. Something I'm made for. Something I'm made for” ? That’s the episodic angst of retirement, too, after all. I had to see the movie. (Spoiler alert: You don’t get to hear “What Was I Made For” until the closing credits, so hang in there.)
On the evening of Valentine’s Day, I planted myself on the couch with a bowl of air popped popcorn and a few Lindt white chocolate strawberry truffles wrapped in their pink Barbie-esque foil, and pushed the rental button for Barbie. And readers, for the next few hours I wasn’t watching a show, I was having an experience. Visually stunning (so much pink!) and full of entertaining characters (evoking so many childhood Mattel memories), I was overwhelmed by the emotions the movie conjured up for me. I laughed, I shed tears (oh, a lot of tears), I cheered. As a retired woman with a newly acquired off and on identity crisis, I was Barbie and Barbie was me. And when America Ferrara’s character delivered her monologue about the struggle of women in our society to “get it right,” I “amen sister” ugly cried. All kinds of women have watched, will watch, and rewatch this movie, as daughters, wives, girlfriends, mothers, sisters, grandmothers, friends, workers, bosses, and dreamers and they’ll all attest, “Yup, that’s our life, folks, up on that screen.” They will all feel seen.
In Barbie, director Greta Gerwig created not only a 21st century tribute to women, but a powerful commentary on feminism and the patriarchy in society…and just so much more. With one little scene on a park bench, she made generations of women think differently about aging.
Barbie: You’re beautiful. Ann Roth: I know!
My Precious Days are not only my Great Retirement Experiment in recalibrating my purpose, they are a marathon therapy session in self-love. The days on this journey can at times feel intoxicating and imperfect at the same time. Despite the ups and downs, the endless questions, and precious insights, this Barbie Boomer dude “abides” (IYKYK 😉). And at the end of each of The Precious Days, thanks to some unexpected support from Billie Eilish and Barbie, the “closer I am to fine.”
And I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There's more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
(The less I seek my source)
Closer I am to fine, yeah
Closer I am to fine, yeah
“Closer to Fine” by the Indigo Girls (chorus)
Source: Musixmatch;Songwriters: Emily Ann Saliers / Amy Elizabeth Ray; Closer to Fine lyrics © Godhap Music
What Was I Made For?
I used to float, now I just fall down
I used to know but I'm not sure now
What I was made for
What was I made for?
Takin' a drive, I was an ideal
Looked so alive, turns out I'm not real
Just something you paid for
What was I made for?
'Cause I, I
I don't know how to feel
But I wanna try
I don't know how to feel
But someday, I might
Someday, I might
When did it end? All the enjoyment
I'm sad again, don't tell my boyfriend
It's not what he's made for
What was I made for?
'Cause I, 'cause I
I don't know how to feel
But I wanna try
I don't know how to feel
But someday I might
Someday I might
Think I forgot how to be happy
Something I'm not, but something I can be
Something I wait for
Something I'm made for
Something I'm made for
Source: LyricFind Songwriters: Billie Eilish O'Connell / Finneas Baird O'Connell What Was I Made For? lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Universal Music Publishing Group
