Bucket list

Every potential retiree has to have a bucket list, right? I made one a couple years ago:

Meditate each morning.

Walk a mile daily.

Deliver four coach training workshops per year.

Deliver four retirement workshops per year.

Do genealogy research four hours per week.

Write four hours per week.

Paint two days per week.

Join artist co-op.

Take one art workshop per year.

Do one elderhostel class per year.

Volunteer for hospice.

Join book club.

Have guests for dinner twice a month.

Visit with kids four times per year.

Some of those things I'd cross out now, but I'd also add:

Learn to speak Italian

Learn to play the harmonica

Travel

I floated an idea past Shel Friday nite about renting an RV and taking an across-the-US trip. Reality intervened--cost, what to do with the dog, the fact that it is probably too close to camping to be fun for me. However, it got me thinking about the places I want to visit, the people I want to see and two things came to mind: 1) how many times I visited great places for work and never took the time to see anything but the hotel or meeting space and 2) the lens I am using now to think about travel is about "lasts". I was in Las Vegas at a conference in October and in Orlando in December for business and thought, "this is the last time I'll be here." Ever. It made me experience the trip in a different way. There is a long list of places I want to see again, and probably for the last time. And, regrettably, a very long list of places I will most likely never see because of our retirement budget.

So, this is the regret of aging! That your time is finite. That there are things you will never get to do. Could be paralyzingly sad if I let it, or it could be the wake up call to look beyond the rhythm of Everyday to a bigger plan for Tomorrow. Now that could be fun! An off-my-rocker bucket list!

Practicing

"Weekdays revolved on a sameness wheel. They turned into themselves so steadily and inevitably that each seemed to be the the original of yesterday's rough draft. Saturdays, however, always broke the mold and dared to be different."

~Maya Angelou

One of the big questions I have about life after retirement has to do with identifying my natural rhythm. I've been getting up at 5:30 AM every morning for a long time and going to bed by 9 to get the sleep I need. I have a friend who used to live in a tree house without electricity or running water (long story) and he used to talk about waking and sleeping with the light like an animal. He'd wake at dawn and go to sleep when it got dark.

I claim to practice what it will be like in retirement on the weekends, but even without the alarm, my body is programmed to wake up early and jump into productivity. What other parts of my life are programmed by my work routine?

My weekends also have a pattern--wake early, run errands or do chores I don't have time for during the week, take time to plan and cook something special, may be take a short road trip or get involved in a hobby. Will this rhythm run my days in retirement?

What I'm noticing:

• that I fear retirement will be endless days of today's weekends
• that I get bored on many weekends
• that there is some anxiety around not having a plan for the weekend

The old doing versus being conundrum!






'

TGIF

Posting the poem I wrote when I was 18 was a little like the open mic experience where people read from their adolescent diaries--embarrassing! Reading it again I was struck by how many of those things I claimed over the last umpteen years. I think the only thing I missed was the black cat. God knows there's been plenty of purple wine! So what's surprised me so far in this un-ordinary life? Here's an excerpt from an old journal:

One sunny October afternoon I took a walk along the bike path not far from my home in Plano, Texas. People were involved in typical activities—jogging, biking, and pushing babies in strollers. My own mood was in sharp contrast to the smiling faces I encountered. It was a very low point in my marriage when nothing either of us did was right. I can remember thinking to myself that my life would probably stretch on exactly like it was until I grew old and died. The thought of an endless sameness depressed me to the point of tears. The workweek was one dull, predictable task after another. There never seemed to be time to relax, let alone time to get ahead of the chores involved in running a family. Weekends were spent trying to get a head start on the next week—grocery shopping, doing laundry, and cooking meals to freeze. Because our marriage had lost its life, we often spent our leisure time on Saturday night with too many people, drinking too much, engaging in too many superficial conversations. The mood of the evening always appeared relaxed, but it often left me empty. There was plenty of laughter, but it had a forced, strident quality to it for me. The chatter certainly made a jolting contrast to the silence that followed after the guests left.

Fast-forward ten years and a divorce. I live in Texas, but in the interim I’ve lived in Washington State near Puget Sound with an old family friend who became a second father to me. I renewed an old high school love and helped his teen-age children through some difficult times. I moved back to my hometown and remodeled and lived in my grandmother’s house. I spent six months with my mother in Arizona strengthening our friendship. I bought a pick-up truck and learned to enjoy my own company as I traveled from one end of the beautiful state of North Carolina to another. I signed my first mortgage as an independent homeowner in Delaware and designed a new kitchen for my 80 year-old home. Eventually I moved back to Texas and saw it through fresh eyes. On my journey I continued my work assisting individuals and organizations in changing and prospering, but the form of that work often looked radically different. I served as a therapist, the director of a day treatment facility for abused children, the director of a department for chronically mentally ill adults, the administrator of a boy’s ranch for substance-abusing pre-release felons, a consultant to a state department of behavioral healthcare services, an international training and development specialist, and a performance management coach. I made meaningful connections with so many people. Hardly, the unending sameness that once depressed me! On that October day ten years before I couldn’t have even imagined the variety of life experiences that were soon to occur.

Certainly from the vantage point of an observer, my life changed considerably over the course of ten years. But I knew that the radical change was internal. I stopped seeing life as something that happened to me and took responsibility for the quality of my adventures. I don’t recommend anything as traumatic as a divorce for a catalyst, but unfortunately sometimes it takes a catastrophic event to motivate us to make fundamental change. Much more than my life circumstances and place of residence or job title changed. I moved myself out of the unsatisfying rut I occupied into a life that was filled with exciting possibilities. I stopped looking at the world from the wrong end of the telescope. I purposefully made changes in my jobs, residences, and relationships to proceed in the direction I wanted to go, but I also remained open to the surprise of unforeseen options. I opened my eyes to possibility and capitalized on opportunity. My new life still contained routine tasks like laundry and cleaning, but they became background noise and not the primary focus of my days. I looked instead to each day with an eagerness to discover what new thing I could learn or experience. I went from a small cadre of friends and acquaintances that had become stale with familiarity to an ever-expanding group of diverse individuals who opened even more new doors. I was pleasantly surprised each Christmas holiday at the burgeoning size of my Christmas card list, which was for me a visible sign of my growing circle of friends.

I’m older now and not eager for big adjustments like the geographic and career changes I once made, but I am still very open to adventure. Adventure doesn’t have to be a cross-country trek or a mountain climb. Adventure can be the result of small choices we make every day. Simple things like trying a new recipe or listening to music you’ve never heard before or reaching out to a new neighbor can make big differences in the quality of your life. I “never say never.” My life journey has been an upward spiral—a path that looped around and back to touch old friends and places in new ways. Now when I look ahead to my future I almost laugh at the fear of a boring life that I had that day in October as I walked on the bike path. 

I need to remind myself now of the closing lines in that entry:

Know that life will surprise you. Be excited by whatever possibilities lie ahead. Your only limits are those of your imagination.

Normal?

I think many people who say they want to be normal, want to be average, to fit in, to be like the in-group. I've never wanted to be ordinary. If anything, my sin is in seeking to distinguish myself from average. I remember the first time someone said to me, "you aren't normal" and meant that with great affection. I've had anything but an ordinary life in many respects and yet there's a nagging curiosity about what I would do, feel, think, even look like, if I were listening strictly to my own voice.

At 18 I wrote a poem about identity:

Letter to Myself

I'd like to be a wide-eyed waif,

With smudgy face and pudgy hand

And roam the street and sleep in deep, blue grass

And never know what I lack or why.

I'd like to be a high-born lady,

With long, silk skirts and a fat, black cat.

And stitch all day and sleep in a feather bed

And never see the sun rise.

I'd like to be a gypsy woman,

With full, hard breasts and long, black hair

And drink purple wine and dance to tease

And never love but hot, young men.

I'd like to be a stiff-backed intellectual

With stores of degrees and greed for more

And talents to develop and ambition to harness

And never know the flow of tears.

I am me though. And what is that?

It's a little bit of everything and not enough

of anything to recognize myself as me.

18 to now going on 65--a whole lifetime of experiences--and I am still exploring the same question. What I'm curious about now is not where I fit in, but who I am when I no longer have to fit someone else's standards--specifically when I retire. I think of the old story about how you boil a frog--you slowly increase the temperature of the water so it doesn't notice and doesn't jump out. I fear that I am a boiled frog. I'm sure I'm a product of the work environment. How could I not be?

So this next year will be a combination of navel-gazing and trying new things to see what really fits for me.

The Suit

There is an old Yiddish folk tale about a young man who left his village to seek his fortune. When he returned he went to the finest tailor in the city and asked that he make him a suit exactly like the one he made for Rabinowitz, the town's most successful citizen. On the final fitting day, the young man notices that one sleeve is too long. "Oh, just hold your arm like this" says the tailor pulling up his left arm. Then the young man notices that the shoulders don't fit. "Just lean this way," says the tailor hunching up his right shoulder. One leg is too short. "Stand like this," says the tailor bending his knee. And, sure enough, it works. The young man leaves the store, bent over and hobbling along. Across the street two old ladies notice him. "Oh my, look at that poor young man" says one. And the other replies, "Yes, but look how well his suit fits!"