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- Former First Lady Michelle Obama says she’s looking toward retiring from public life.
- Obama told People Magazine she’s “[selectively] picking projects and chasing summer.”
- Since leaving office, the Obamas have been busy with entertainment projects and book deals.
- Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories.
Former First Lady Michelle Obama says she is mulling retiring from public life four years after leaving the White House and becoming a private citizen.
Obama told People Magazine in an interview published Wednesday that she’s “[selectively] picking projects and chasing summer.”
“Barack and I never want to experience winter again,” Obama, a native of Chicago, Illinois, told the magazine. “We’re building the foundation for somebody else to continue the work so we can retire and be with each other – and Barack can golf too much, and I can tease him about golfing too much because he’s got nothing else to do.”
After leaving the White House, the Obamas relocated to the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington, DC, purchased another home on Martha’s Vineyard, and kept busy with numerous advocacy, literary, and entertainment ventures.
They’ve both written memoirs (the first volume of Barack Obama’s memoirs, “A Promised Land,” was released in late 2020), and completed film and podcast projects through their production company, Higher Ground, with more projects in the pipeline. “The Michelle Obama Podcast” debuted in 2020 and the former president recently did a Spotify podcast project with Bruce Springsteen titled “Renegades: Born in the USA.”
The former first lady also has a new Netflix children’s show, “Waffles and Mochi,” that will debut soon and a special edition of her wildly successful 2018 memoir “Becoming” is being released for young readers.
In the near future, the Obamas will also celebrate the opening of the Obama Presidential Library in Chicago, which is currently under construction.
They most recently made an appearance at the January 20 inauguration of President Joe Biden, who previously served as Obama’s vice president.
Obama told People that during the pandemic, she struggled with “low-grade depression” compounded by the civil unrest over the deaths of George Floyd and other Black Americans over the summer. Jury selection in the trial of one of the Minneapolis police officers involved in Floyd’s death, Derek Chauvin, is currently underway.
She said she coped with 2020 by getting into knitting and swimming while being home with her two daughters Malia and Sasha, students at Harvard University and the University of Michigan, respectively, who spent months doing remote learning.
“Knitting is a forever proposition You don’t master knitting, because once you make a scarf, there’s the blanket. And once you do the blanket, you’ve got to do the hat, the socks … I could go on about knitting!” Obama told People.
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