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It’s always great to run into an old friend you haven’t seen in an age and a half. So it went recently for me and my old pal Marcia. 

The Big M (as I and her other close pals always called her) spent her career as a tax preparer. She did returns for the high and mighty, but also for hundreds of others. Because of her accuracy, her promptness and her sunny disposition, she was the go-to gal for more than 40 years. 

But last year she turned 65. On that day, she abruptly retired. Told her partners she was done. Picked up her laptop and purse. Closed her office door one last time. Walked off into the sunset. 

Should she have?  

It’s not for me to say, obviously. If Marcia wanted to go from 60 to zero, bam, just like that, it was her decision to make. 

But when I asked her what she’s been doing since that fateful day, she said: “Nothing much. Walking around the neighborhood. Cooking Mexican food. Sleeping as late as I like. Mowing the lawn.” 

This is the Marcia I knew? This is the Marcia who saved her clients hundreds, who made the pain of paying taxes actually enjoyable?  

Didn’t she owe it to the world, to her former clients and to herself to keep doing what she had always done? 

“Bob,” she said, “this is what I want.” 

Marcia and I agreed to disagree, and we remain friends to this day. But as I told her, I profoundly disagree with her new approach to Marcia-ness.  

She is violating Bob Rule One: Even when age creeps up on you — especially when age creeps up on you — you owe it to yourself and the world to go as hard as you can, for as long as you can.  

Yes, I try to live according to the advice I gave Marcia. I’m always adding stuff to do, never subtracting. As I type this, I’m looking at my appointment book for next week. It’s already so crammed with entries that there’s no white space left. 

For Marcia, the hard stop she has placed on her Career Self would be more understandable if she had hated her career. But she loved it.  

And for her clients, it would have been obvious if she hadn’t. She always had time for each person. She always wanted to hear about the kids and the grands.  

Most of all, Marcia was good at what she did. Really, really good.  

That doesn’t mean that other, younger accountants are not good. Lots are. But experience is a unique asset, and that’s what Marcia brought to the table.  

When she said she was approaching a tax problem in a certain way, you knew that she had approached that problem in the same way many times previously. 

To me, it’s a zero-sum game in the professional world. When The Big M benches herself, when she removes her expertise from the universe, the net knowledge of that universe suffers.  

So, shouldn’t Marcia do a few tax returns each year — just a few — to keep her hand in, and to keep the zero-sum game from edging into minus territory? 

Marcia acknowledged that she had thought about this. But for her, the sudden stop was about freedom. 

She doesn’t have a bucket list. Never has. She just wants to wake up each day — “Hopefully at 10 o’clock!” — and do whatever she likes. The what-she-likes includes nothing at all. 

Don’t you miss your clients, Marcia? “Sure.” 

Don’t you miss the satisfaction of doing a job well? “Sure.” 

Don’t you feel the urge to teach younger accountants how to do their job better?  

Marcia glared at me. “The lawn needs mowing,” she said. 

You’ve surely heard that cliché — that no one ever lies on his deathbed wishing he had spent more time at the office. Marcia spent plenty of time at the office.  

But to pull up one’s career roots so abruptly, to close that office door so firmly one last time, seems unlike the Marcia I knew. She was always a planner. Now, she doesn’t plan. 

“Bob,” she said, “that’s precisely the plan. To have no plan.” 

Hats off to you, lady. I couldn’t be you. I couldn’t pull up my career drawbridge.  

But your lawn will always need mowing. 

Bob Levey is a national award-winning columnist.