For a person who’s a bit of a workaholic, being unemployed – albeit by choice – is a strange thing.

Of course, I’m only unemployed in a technical sense. I’m not working at a job for which I’m getting paid. In fact, I’m working at a job for which I am paying. But make no mistake, this is a job. I’m probably working harder right now than I ever have. My deadlines (for reading, for example) are often no longer than two days. And if I have a deadline a week off, believe me, I need that entire time to plow through the amount of material we’re assigned.

But still, even though I’m trying to approach school as if it were a job, it isn’t what many people would think of as a job, per se. It’s more in the line of preparing for a job. And I can’t be fired, as I could (and have been) from a regular job. I can screw around enough so that I fail, but it’s pretty much entirely up to me (which, in some ways, is a little scarier than job insecurity).

It’s weird though, as a middle-aged man, to have somebody ask you what you do and answer, “I’m in school.” That’s a phrase I thought I’d stopped using 30 years ago. Things change, I guess.

I’ve jokingly told people that my return to school was nothing more than a retreat from the real world. That is mostly a joke, but as the old saying goes, many a truth is said in jest. And while I’m really just trying to get into a different part of the real world, and a master’s degree is my ticket through that door, it’s been refreshing to not have to worry about some of the same things most grownups do.

Let’s put it this way: No matter how badly I screw up here, the chances are pretty much nonexistent that I’ll get the school sued and the plaintiff will win enough money that the University of Missouri will have to shut down. That was never a real close fear during my reporter/editor days, but it always was at least a possibility. When I worked for the F-M Extra, lawsuits weren’t so much a danger, but angering an advertiser was. There’s at least one column I wanted to write but never did because it would have angered a whole segment of our advertising base; if those people pulled their ads, there was a very real possibility that the paper would have gone under. Nothing I had to say was worth my job, much less those of my co-workers.

It has been nice, though, to get off the treadmill for a while. Not that the world is that awful a place, but when you get some distance from it, it starts to become apparent how much life can grind you down. Even if you are relatively happy – and for most of my 52 years, I’ve had a life any sane man would kill for and many can’t even approach – the daily demands of the rat race can get awfully tiresome.

Fortunately, we humans have this wonderful defense mechanism that often enables us to ignore how hard some things really are. Think of the last really awful job or really toxic relationship you had. It was only after leaving that situation that one day, you looked back and shuddered at how really terrible it was, how it could have rotted the edges of your soul. It’s not pleasant to feel the ice water that trickles down your spine with that realization. But think how much more awful it would be – think of the poor souls you’ve known for whom it happens – to realize how terrible things are as you’re going through them. To quote another old saying, when you’re up to your butt in alligators it’s hard to remember your initial objective was to drain the swamp.

I’m not saying we should all chuck it, that life is so terrible that we should all just bag our responsibilities and go to grad school or something. The fact is, I was able to change my life because my kids were grown and I was in a position to do something for myself. But for a lot of years, I was the family man. I had a family to take care of (along with my wife), obligations both to them and to co-workers, a life that required some stability and taking as few gambles as possible. I’m simply lucky now that I’m in a position where I can roll the dice. If I fail, I fail only myself.

But still, I realize that the position I’m in now is really only a continuation of some very good luck. My life not only has been devoid of tragedy, but it’s actually turned out really well in all the ways that matter (like having good, decent, healthy kids and people who love me).

I don’t pretend to know the secret of happiness, but maybe that’s it, or at least part of it: to know that, difficult as life can be, and many are the defeats, if you look and think, you can see that things aren’t all that bad. The rat race is still out there, and you have to run it to have even a chance of survival. But in the end, coming in first isn’t all that important; just running it honorably is enough.