What's So Sexy About THIS?

I don't think I'm doing this retirement thing right.


Like so many other key events of a life -- becoming a "woman" when the menses starts, turning 16, getting drunk, or losing one's virginity -- it's just not going the way I had imagined it would.


I remember when I was in my forties (yes, I can still remember them) there had been a number of opportunities to listen to "experts" on career planning. One point they all seemed to stress was the need for working people to have a plan for their retirement. It wasn't a good idea, they said, to simply drift aimlessly into the alarm-clock free, meeting-free, bossless, end-t0-end days of leisure.


I had done the planning, like the "sperts" suggested. According to my plan, I should be sitting in first class on some international airline, making my way through my travel list. I should have already spent several weeks in Australia and New Zealand. Italy and Spain would have claimed a month or so of my time by now.


Well. There is no need to rehash all the reasons that plan has fizzled flamboyantly into the mist. No amount of planning I knew how to do included the Great Recession of the New Millenium.


This morning I awoke and repeated a habit I've had since childhood. I lie in bed each morning and mentally review the list of things I have to accomplish that day. This particular morning, the list was so short it stunned me. During the time I was a working mother with all kinds of business, civic and personal responsibilities, I would have killed to wake up just once in that predicament. Not today.

Today I realized that 2010 has truly become the first days of a time when I cannot afford to look back, not even for a moment. I need to develop a forward moving plan, but this time with little to no resources other than my mind, my body and my soul.


There is an overwhelming sense that I am wasting time, that this carefree time that I struggled so hard to reach in recent months is nothing more than a squandering of my own potential and usefulness. On the other hand, I am reluctant to make commitments to volunteer or join groups, for fear that I will fall back into the dizzying pace that results from my irrational tendency to take on ever-increasing amounts of responsibility wherever I go.

I realized today that, although I have spent most of my life "looking forward" to some kind of milestone, some kind of achievement that I could check off my bucket list, I currently have no such "something" in the pipeline.


Am I done? Have I accomplished everything I'm going to accomplish in this lifetime? If I have, and at 65 I could well have another 25-30 years of life ahead of me, then that is just wrong. With people around me who are 20 and more years younger facing debilitating illness and premature death, I am in relatively good health and I'm still able to think a coherent thought every now and then. What a waste!

Since it doesn't look likely that I will find a job anytime soon, my self-imposed assignment for the next several weeks is to find something to drop into my pipeline. I will discover at least one, hopefully several things I can accomplish in the total absence of money that will provide me with the sense of purpose, the feeling of usefulness and the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others, that I so desperately miss.


Think I can do it? Stay tuned.