The Identity Gap
The question that unmade me
One thing about living in Wales, the people are curious, they always ask questions on first meetings. It was a couple of days before Christmas so I popped over to the neighbours with Ola and a bottle of wine to wish them a happy Christmas — it was partly tactical, we knew they had family arriving the next day, all fourteen of them. The turkey delivery arrived while we were there, it was the size of a calf.
Our neighbour’s friend who we’d not met before was visiting, no doubt also keen to complete Christmas well-wishing before the family’s arrival, he was roughly my age, still in harness, a master builder. He had the slightly glazed look of someone who’d been talking about Welsh cottage renovations for twenty minutes and was ready for a new topic. ‘So what do you do?’
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.
Not because I’d forgotten. Because I genuinely didn’t have a good answer.
I used to have a response that landed. Consultant, technical writer. I translate complex systems architecture into documents people can actually understand. Decades of that — systems architecture, operating procedures, proposals, board reports. The answer located me. It said: I’m useful. I’m competent. I belong in this conversation.
Now I’m... what? Retired? The word felt like announcing I’d been put out to pasture like the two donkeys Rossie and Jasmin who live in the field at the back of our home. I couldn’t say I was a writer, that would cue the next squirm-inducing question. What have you written? ‘Oh… My last work was the Standard Operation Procedures for the Risk Management Department in Commerzbank, have you read it? It’s available at all good booksellers.’ (The Retirist was still a vague concept at this point — a notebook scribble, not a Substack.)
I said something about ‘stepping back a little’ and ‘fixing the loose slabs on the patio.’ His eyes did that thing — the slight drift toward the next person, the polite nod, the gentle pivot that left his back facing me. I found myself gazing at an old Sycamore tree in my neighbour’s garden, holding a mince pie I didn’t want, wondering where I’d gone.
The Skin, Not the Coat
Here’s what I’ve learned about the Identity Gap: it’s not about missing your job. It’s about discovering that you and your job had merged into one over the years.
I thought my career was something I did. Turns out it was something I was. Decades of reinforcement will do that. Every meeting where my opinion was sought. Every deadline where I delivered. Every introduction where my title opened the door before I’d said a word. The professional identity isn’t a coat you wear to work and hang up when you get home. Over decades, it becomes the skin.
Descartes had cogito, ergo sum — I think, therefore I am. For people like us, it’s closer to perficio, ergo sum — I achieve, therefore I am.
The statistics bear this out. Research from Russell Reynolds found that 47 per cent of CEOs view their role not as a job but as their fundamental identity. I was far from being the CEO, but I still recognise the pattern. The role wasn’t what I did from nine to five. It was who I was, full stop.
And here’s the uncomfortable number: while 67 per cent of workers say they feel financially ready for retirement, only 48 per cent feel emotionally prepared. That gap — between the pension and the self — is where the Identity Gap lives. We planned the money. We didn’t plan the soul.
The Void and the Ghost
The experience has a texture. I’ve been trying to map it.
There’s the void, not a passive emptiness but an active, disorienting force. Harvard researcher Teresa Amabile, who spent a decade studying professional transitions, heard her subjects describe it the same way: ‘jumping into the void,’ ‘drifting in open water,’ ‘lost in a fog with no signposts.’ One pre-retiree in her study put it plainly: ‘After I retire, I’m going to have to discover who I really am.’ He’d spent forty years with that discovery on hold.
Then there’s the ghost. I visited London last month to view a second hand guitar for sale. An excuse — I just wanted to feel the energy of the city again. I walked through Liverpool Street at rush hour, that river of purpose flowing around me. I used to be one of them. Now I was standing still in the current, present but no longer part of it. A haunting in comfortable loafers.
A South African study of retired CEOs captured the sensation precisely: ‘There was no diary, and nobody was talking to me. And so, what next?’ Another admitted: ‘There were some days where I actually thought I was going to sort of fall apart completely.’
I haven’t fallen apart. But I’ve felt the wobble.
The New Acquaintances Question
The ‘What do you do?’ ritual is where the Identity Gap becomes visible.
For thirty years, my answer to that question was a shield and a spear. It asserted position, established common ground, and filtered social value. ‘Technical writing consultant, mostly financial services’ — the conversation knew the path to follow. I was located in the hierarchy. The other person could calibrate their interest accordingly.
Now the question forces me into the past tense. ‘I was a consultant.’ ‘I used to work in...’ The grammar itself announces obsolescence. And the response is often immediate — the slight flicker of diminished interest, the search for someone still in the game.
Amabile’s research found one retiree who dreaded the question so intensely that he started a nominal handyman business. Not for the income. Not because he loved fixing things. Just so he could say ‘I’ve got a handyman business’ instead of ‘I’m retired.’ He needed something to be, and he’d rather be a handyman than nothing.
I understand that impulse. I’ve caught myself reaching for the old answers even when they no longer fit. At a pub last autumn, I spent ten minutes explaining a project I’d finished eighteen months earlier, present-tensing it, making it sound current. Ola’s foot found mine under the table — the gentle kick that says you’re doing the thing again.
The thing. Clinging to a former self because the current one feels quite nebulous.
The Tenant Becomes the Architect
Amabile offers a metaphor that helps: the shift from Tenant to Architect.
For decades, I was a tenant of the life structure that work provided. The organisation furnished everything — the rhythm of the day, the goals, the social network, the status hierarchy. ‘We know where we’re going to be at 9:00 AM Monday through Friday,’ as one of her subjects put it. I didn’t have to build the scaffolding of my existence. It was handed to me, along with a briefcase and a laptop.
Now I’m supposed to be the architect. Build my own structure. Design my own days. Find my own reasons to get out of bed that don’t involve a client deadline or a board meeting.
For someone who spent years executing within structures rather than building them, this is harder than it sounds. I stare at what should be an excited blank canvas and see something closer to a void. Freedom, it turns out, requires architecture. And I’ve never had to draw these plans before.
The Consulting Trap
I nearly fell into the consulting trap.
Stepping back was bumpy. I’d email former clients with ideas. ‘Just keeping the door open,’ I told Ola. ‘Staying connected.’ But I know what I was really doing: looking for a way to maintain the form of work without committing to the substance. A halfway house where I could still answer the question with something that sounded current.
A lot of people at this stage do this — the immediate pivot to ‘portfolio work’ or ‘consulting roles.’ It looks like a strategic choice. It often isn’t. It’s a defence mechanism.
The problem is that consulting rarely provides what the old role did. The thick social interactions are gone. The command authority is gone. You’re going through familiar motions in unfamiliar circumstances, always on the outside, neither fully engaged nor fully retired. A ghost in your own former life.
I stopped emailing former clients. Not because I’d figured anything out, but because I suspected I was postponing something I needed to face.
The Timeline Nobody Mentions
Here’s what the research says that nobody tells you: this takes time. Real time. Not weeks. Years.
Amabile’s decade of research found that identity reconstruction ‘typically took from six months to two years (or more)’ for her subjects. Those who were most fused with their work, the high-achievers, the ones for whom the role was the self took longest.
Forty-one per cent of retirees experience moderate to severe identity disruption within the first year. For executives and senior professionals, the figure is likely higher. We optimised for achievement; we didn’t diversify our identity portfolio.
There’s a phase structure, though it doesn’t always arrive in order:
The honeymoon, if it comes at all. Some people get a burst of relief, the stress hormones drain, the freedom feels giddy. I missed the bit where stress hormones drain — I was in the process of moving to West Wales and the property chain I was in had just collapsed, there was still plenty of stress and looming deadlines. Then, after the move the diary looked back at me, empty, and the void curdled.
The disenchantment. This is when the ‘to do’ list runs out. You’ve fixed the fence, the dog won’t escape again. You’ve organised every tool in the shed. You’ve done the Dubai trip. And the lack of role — not tasks, but role — becomes undeniable.
The reorientation. Experimentation. Trying things. Failing at some. This is where I am now, I think. Though the borders are blurry.
The point isn’t the phases. It’s the timeline. Six months to two years. Minimum. This isn’t weakness or failure. It’s the normal duration of reconstructing a self that was decades in the making.
What Naming Provides
I’m not offering solutions here. The Identity Gap doesn’t close with a five-point plan.
But I’ve found that naming it helps.
Before I had language for this, I thought I was uniquely failing at something everyone else managed gracefully. The ‘what do you do’ stumble, the ghost walks through Liverpool Street, reaching for old answers — these felt like personal inadequacies. Evidence that I hadn’t prepared properly, or didn’t have enough hobbies, or lacked the wit to enjoy my freedom.
Now I know this is the territory. The Identity Gap is what happens when you spend decades melding self and role, and then the role ends. It’s not a personal failing. It’s the architecture of a particular kind of life, meeting its necessary demolition.
‘Ah, that’s the Identity Gap’ is different from ‘what’s wrong with me?’
Recognition isn’t a solution. But it’s where reconstruction begins.
Sitting With It
I’m writing this on a Thursday afternoon in January. The rain is hammering down, Storm Goretti is on its way and Wales never likes to miss out on a spot of weather. Ola is working in the other room — she still has structure, still has the daily rhythm of purpose. I have a cup of cold tea and a window full of grey.
This is the gap. I’m in it. I don’t know how long I’ll be here or what’s on the other side. The research says six months to two years, but research is all about averages, and I’ve never been much good at being average.
What I do know is this: the Identity Gap isn’t something to rush through. It’s territory to understand. You can’t architect a new life until you’ve acknowledged that the old one is actually gone — not on hold, not temporarily paused, but finished. That notebook in my filing cabinet, with its deadlines and decisions and evidence of mattering, is history now. It’s who I was. Not who I am.
Who I am is still under construction.
I’ll let you know what I find.
The Identity Gap is the first in the ‘Mind The Gap’ series — essays exploring the psychological territory of post-career transition. Next: The Domestic Gap, or what happens when home becomes your only arena.
If this landed — if you thought ‘yes, exactly’ at any point — I’d like you to stick around. Subscribe below. We’re mapping this territory together.