Best "Retirement Plan" You Won't Follow
Don't let the "I'm Gonnas" Get You
Almost everybody has a pile of I’m gonnas. You know the I’m gonnas, the things you’re gonna do when you finally retire. Learn Italian, restore the ‘67 Mustang, write the novel, hike the Camino. Become the person you always meant to be, right after the farewell cake in the breakroom.
The I’m gonnas are one of the great comedic tropes of modern life, mostly because everybody has them and almost nobody runs them. We’ve rehearsed them in our heads 1000 times and sometimes even announced them at parties. And then retirement arrives and we mostly just… reorganize the garage.
I know you come here for the snark, but every once in a while I like to slip a little genuine emotion into the mix. This is one of those times, because that’s what this film is really about.
John Kelly’s animated short “Retirement Plan” (nominated for a 2026 Oscar, hosted on The New Yorker’s channel) is seven minutes and twenty seconds on exactly this. It’s funny and dark, and gets at the mindset so precisely it’s almost uncomfortable. And then it makes you laugh anyway, which is the Aging Against My Will house special. Consider this a kindred-spirit dispatch with bona fides up the wazoo.
Watch it. Then come back and tell me which I’m gonna you’re definitely, absolutely, this-time-for-real gonna do.
The 8 glasses of water thing is a conspiracy, and nobody actually does it. We all just keep trying because we're afraid of what our kidneys will say about us at the funeral if we stop.
Glad you liked the piece.
That was fun. Almost all the things he said he was going to do, fall into one of 3 categories for me:
1- have already done
2- don't ever want to do
3- still intend to do
One notable exception:
- drink 8 glasses of water per day.
I dont believe it's possible, or ever been done on a sustained basis, but I continue to try, with no illusions of success.