I recently saw the movie Into the Woods, a wonderful, fantastical, musical telling of several famous fairy tales. R and I had seen the musical theater version in NYC decades ago and loved it.
Most of us know the basic story of Cinderella, the young mistreated step-daughter who through magical means attends the King's ball, captivates the charming prince but dashes from him as midnight approaches leaving him to hopelessly chase after her. In this telling, Cinderella dashes from the prince not once or twice but three times. On her third dash out the castle door, Cinderella, thanks to the planful Prince, becomes stuck in some pitch (black goo) on the palace steps. As she struggles to free herself, she puts her internal struggle into song, giving poetic words to her indecision. Should she stay? Should she let him catch her? Should she continue to run? She ponders the risk of being caught, including will she fit in and is she really what a prince would want. What is the right decision she wonders? She sings her way into a kind of decision -- which is to not decide. Instead she leaves the prince a clue as to her identity, her shoe, figuring if he wants her, he'll find her. The decision then falls to the Prince.
As I sat watching the lovely Anna Kendrick sing her song of indecision, I found myself identifying with her. Oh, I thought, I'm having a little trouble in the decision department myself.
When I closed my practice, we sold the home, and traveled west, I decided, in a sense not-to-decide about retiring. I decided, in what I thought was a stroke of insight, to take a gap year. A gap year. A year off. A travel year. A year not-to-decide. A year of not committing to a decision. At that point, what I most desperately knew was that I wanted to leave the Midwest, travel, and resettle in the west where R and I both grew up.
What I passed over was the process of figuring out how I might want my life to look if I did retire -- my retirement vision. The incredible world travels and cute new house provided excellent distractions from deciding and figuring out this next phase. Retire or not? Part-time work or not? And the bigger, more detailed how do I want to spend my time?
Oops. While I was busy channeling the indecisive Cinderella, I should have been connecting with my usual planful self. Ugh. But it is not too late. While I'm feeling a little stuck in the goo, I'm not beyond mobilizing myself. And R reassuringly has pointed out that I can figure this out in pieces and I can change my mind if a year from now I decide something different. I like that kind of flexible thinking.
Right now I have two months until the "gap year" ends. My goal is to create my initial vision for my retirement and step out of my Cinderella phase (see pretty shoe below) into my Life-in-Bend phase (see bootie). Since the process involves research, I'm excited because I love a good research task.
