It will Probably Be Different From What You Imagine

  Oh fantasy, where would future plans be without you? Many people imagine, fantasize about life after decades of work. They envision lots of play time on beaches, long afternoon naps, endless travel, all kinds of anti-work activities, more of that most precious commodity -- free time. Humans have the capacity to predict (usually based on prior experiences) how something might unfold, how the experience will go for them. It isn't too difficult to predict how one might experience a routine trip to the grocery store or a stop at a gas station. But what about completely new experiences, those without prior experiences attached? For many of us, there are experiences we simply need to live through to figure them out, to process and understand them and to know ourselves in them. The transition to retirement is like that, at least for me.

  Prior to taking the gap-year, I read all I could find about gap-year adventures, senior gap-year adventures, retirement, semi-retirement, encore careers, re-imagined careers, passion about careers, life phases, life transitions, round-the-world travel, vangabond senior living, full-time life on the road (in addition to books on the topic I read blogs like Retirement:A Full-Time Job, Satisfying Retirement, Early Retirement Journey and HomeFreeAdventures).  In other words, the good researcher and curious part of me did her investigative work. In my active brain and electronically, I explored all sides of the stay or go question, all sides of taking a break, traveling for months at a time, becoming a permanent bum, finding new pursuits. I became a knowledge expert. As best I could, I prepared myself for this significant transition, and mostly my prep work paid off. Traveling for long stretches always comes with complications, some predictable, some not -- delayed flights, torrential rains, sketchy hotel rooms, illness, questionable, sometimes unrecognizable food  -- but most of the travel was magical. New experiences each day, lots of adventures, the delicious excitement of the yet to be known. That part of the living through experience has worked.

  Moving to a new community and new house has been.......not challenging but different from what I thought it would be.  R and I knew retirement, semi-retirement, or whatever I call this next yet-to-be-named phase would be trickier for me than for him. We are different with different needs and wants and expectations. I get that. I did not know that each day, with each experience I would be collecting data on how I want or don't want to live this phase of my life. Apparently, I'm one of the must-live-through-this time-to-know folks. 

  One of the ways I know that I'm puzzling through an experience is when I don't quite feel like myself. I'm not the Chicagoan anymore but I'm hardly settled in the new life, even though I now possess an Oregon driver's license and my passport sports my new address. I recognize my house as my house but it doesn't yet feel like home. I'm meeting new people but none know me historically, through the experiences that have shaped me into who I am. Over the years I have learned that floating in this state of not-quite-me means I'm in transition and is a necessary, if uncomfortable part of change. Who wants to wake up each morning not-quite feeling like themselves?  I'm traveling through this phase with the knowledge that I'm on my way to somewhere new, probably a place unfamiliar to me, a place unlike the fantasy. A place, since I've not lived-through it, I could not quite have predicted.  The tremendous upside is that moving into the unknown leaves me open to possibilities. 

  Last week I read Oliver Sacks' piece in the NY Times "My Own Life: On Learning I Have Terminal Cancer."  Not only was I deeply moved by Sacks describing his experiences, I found his thoughts on living till the end wonderful guidelines, perhaps a philosophy for simply living fully, especially when one is in the last quadrant of life. Here are a few of Oliver Sack's thoughts extracted from the article --

"It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me."
"I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can."
"I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight."

"I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective."
"There is no time for anything inessential."
"I must focus on myself, my work and my friends."
"I shall no longer look at "NewsHour" every night."
"I shall no longer pay any attention to politics or arguments about global warming.
This is not indifference but detachment -- "

I wonder if Dr. Sacks' response to this phase is different from what he imagined? Mostly, I admire his clarity of thought. To achieve such clarity is my goal.

Good morning, Bend

80 Beds, An Anniversary, and Moving Forward

     Rainforest, New Zealand 2014. I look really small.

    The bed count within the gap-year reached.....80. I'd like to say the 80th bed was located in an exotic, breathtakingly beautiful locale, a place full of adventure and dazzling sights but.....in reality the 80th bed resided in a Hampton Inn directly off I-5 in Elk Grove/Laguna, Northern California where we stopped for the night on our way too long drive from Palm Springs to Oregon. Clearly, not all bed experiences are created equal. But I'm so getting ahead of myself. WE HAD AN ANNIVERSARY!

     Thursday was an anniversary of sorts. A year ago that day, movers swept our boxes and furnishings off to storage in Indiana and we piled ourselves into our overstuffed SUV to begin our journey west and into a new phase of life.

     Those who know me know my love for travel and ongoing itchiness to see and experience the world. Where did my gap-year adventures take us? Because I love data and counting stuff, I've made a few lists.

State side (and in no particular order)  National Parks  -- Mesa Verde, CO, Saguaro East, AZ, Crater Lake, OR, Olympic, WA, Grand Canyon, AZ, Haleakala, HI, Hawaii Volcanoes, HI. I like this list.
Other locales -- NYC and the 9/11 Memorial, a visit with dear friends, and tour of Harlem, cycling on the San Juan Islands, WA, visits to Vancouver, WA, Portland, OR, Palm Desert, 
Palm Springs, Tucson and more.

Cruises -- four -- Transatlantic from Florida to Amsterdam, Norwegian with stops in Iceland, Faroe Islands, and Shetland Island, Vancouver, BC to the Hawaiian Islands, Hawaiian Islands through French Polynesia to North Island of New Zealand to Sydney.
Bike trips -- two -- Ireland's Connemara Coast and New Zealand's South Island.

Places visited -- Lisbon, Portugal, La Harve, (Normandy) France (Omaha Beach, WWII museum), Dover, England, Bruges, Belgium, Amsterdam (Van Gogh Museum, Anne Frank House), Brussels, Dublin, Ireland, Connemara Coast, Ireland, Galway, Ireland, Glasgow, Scotland, Copenhagen, Denmark, Oslo, Norway, Bergen, Norway, Faroe Islands, Shetland Island, Scotland, Grainger Fjord, Norway, London, Vancouver, BC, Hawaii, Oahu, Maui, Tahiti, Bora Bora, Auckland, NZ, Bay of Islands, NZ, Sydney, AU, Adelaide, Kangaroo Island, Christchurch, NZ, Franz Joseph Glacier, back roads of NZ, Moeraki, NZ, Queenstown, NZ. Happily, almost every place we visited was new territory for us.
We also managed to see all my siblings, many of our nieces and nephews, some grandnieces and nephews, R's family, and the Canadian group of aunt, uncle and cousins, as well as longstanding dear, dear friends. Toss into the year that we sold one home, bought another, and sold another small property. Gosh, I think we were on the move.

  My gap-year has been astounding, but not one without unexpected complications, disappointments, delights, mistakes and missteps  -- just like life. I wish that everyone I love, cherish, care about in any way could have such a year, to travel, to grow, to change, to learn, to see, to appreciate -- with an emphasis on appreciating, how much we have, how few material items are required to make a good life. Then perhaps we could all discuss how one settles down after such a year. I haven't a clue so right now each day I'm just making it up. Just like life.

      Forward R and I move. More beds to locate and count. More experiences to enjoy.

    Mum and Joey. Kangaroo Island, Australia. 2014

    Feeding my Australian friends.

Deciding or Deciding Not to Decide -- Letting go of Cinderella

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.

Ditching Cinderella but keeping the shoes. Booties work best in Bend for stepping into the new life.

Learning New Skills Is A Good Thing As We Age......But All At Once?

The WSJ ran a story a week ago called "It's never too late to learn new skills," highlighting how older adults can learn languages, downhill skiing, even coding no matter their ages. This is an encouraging idea for me and R (and so many others) because we are learning to cross country ski (lots of hills in Bend even when cross country skiing) and I love learning and this gap year has been, and I hope continues to be all about learning and new experiences. Besides current thinking is that learning something new is really good for our aging brains. But I have a question -- must all my new learning, all the new skill sets come at once?

Apparently so ... at least when one moves. Right now, everything is new -- well except for us because we are still old as is the car.  There is the house in all its gleaming newness to figure out. There is the new city, mostly yet to be explored not to mention the vast Oregon outdoors and spectacular nature. Then there is the new life to be discovered, new friends to make, activities to select and engage in, places to go, people to see. You get the drift. Also there are the new physicians to find and new dentists to book. Did I mention that we also each need a new driver's license requiring us to take the written test?

All the appliances and gadgetry in the house are also new. When's the last time you read instruction books for an oven, convection oven, cook top, outside gas grill, refrigerator, dish washer, heating system, and washer and dryer?  On Christmas I almost melted a pot because I didn't bother to "learn" that the cooktop has a super burner which produces enough force to lift a small rocket or melt steel. And because we divested ourselves of many older household possessions prior to leaving Chicago, I have the pleasure of learning about, but never really understanding, how to use two televisions (they look like TVs but act like sly, slightly suspect oversized computers). Now we have AppleTV with its bright, teasing icons that frustrate me with constant lock outs and a mysterious DVR recorder that I can't operate and a Smart TV I'm unable to turn on. I'm actually not sure how the Smart TV differs from a regular TV but I'm guessing I'll learn. Or better yet, one of them may tell me -- if they are so smart. However I frame this time, it comes down to that I have lots to learn. So much it turns out that my brain and I had to take a "break." For those not in the mental health profession, that's a euphemism for I had a melt down. It wasn't pretty. It was a little sad. But after a day or two of rest, I and my brain recovered.


What's the lesson? The WSJ article is correct -- older brains that sit upon older bodies 
can learn new skills. But probably the skills should be learned one or two at a time rather 
than in large chunks. That's my experience.
Bed count holds at 72 but I'm hopeful that a little travel is in my future. After all the learning and new skills acquired, I've earned some R & R. After I pass the written driver's test.

Bed 72. Year is Ending but Gap Year Continues. It Is All a Transition.

     We are now living in Bend in our new little cottage-style house. The house wasn't quite finished when we moved in. Kitchen drawers, a shower door, a bathroom mirror, cabinet glass were missing as well as some wall paint, closet inserts, closet drawers, light fixtures and all the landscaping and fencing.  But in we moved because either we moved in or we headed to a hotel for our generous rental situation had come to a close.

     In we moved while an army of contractors marched about the house, mostly finishing the unfinished details. While R and I experienced some excitement as we reacquainted ourselves with the belongings we'd sent to storage nine months before ("I remember that" at times one of us would exclaim as well as "Geez, I don't remember that. Did you buy that?"), the most exciting moving day event was the delivery of our new bed. As someone who has slept in a wide variety of beds over the year-- well 71 beds exactly if I don't count the bed on the ship in Baja or one in a Seal Beach hotel .....I know what constitutes a good bed. This new bed is excellent.  It is dreamy, comfortable, gives and supports in just the right places, and is enormous. I've dressed it in new Egyptian cotton sheets, smooth, cool, soft, and luxurious and wrapped it all in a fluffy, allergen free comforter. I love the bed. It is ours and it is stationary.  

     Stationary? When did that benign word become so foul? The stationary part bothers me.  I have fallen for a bed that doesn't travel and already doubt that this special new love is strong enough to hold me in place for now.  Comfortable, dreamy new beds are no cure for itchy feet. Oh well.

Happily, the gap year continues, at least until June. Small adventures await -- a road trip to Tucson for Spring cycling, a family celebration in Palm Springs. Then bigger adventures follow -- a transatlantic cruise with stops in Spain, France, and Italy and land travels in Italy including a cycling tour in Puglia and another possibly in France.

What a year. Most of it far better, more interesting, more enlivening, more engaging then I'd ever imagined. Some of it, like the almost daily scrambling for a place to stay in July as we traveled during summer's high season was unpredictably challenging. We made it. It was a transition. Biggest lesson from the year is that all of life is a transition, if you are lucky.  Because that means you are moving forward. That also means you'll have lots of new experiences that in many ways mirror the first day of kindergarten -- new place, possibly scary new people, many of whom are way taller than you, unclear expectations, mysterious rules for performing. And figuring out, in that delicate, intuitive manner most of us employ who might make a good friend. Luckily, this time, however, you'll have lots of previous life experiences to guide you.

     Has life as a 24/7 couple been......challenging? You bet. I imagine that R had no idea the length of time I can be annoying. I never knew he could sit quietly for such long stretches working on financial analysis.  He never knew that I need a far amount of silence each day in order to settle my mind. While we knew we were prone to power struggles, who knew every request for directions (and we've managed lots and lots of directions over the year) potentially could dissolve into a battle of who knows-the-best-way-to-go. We've learned to name the struggle and attempt to collaborate around directions. All this is amusing since I'm directionally challenged and R is easily disorganized. We've both confirmed that while cities are wonderful places to visit, nothing beats nature for calming the soul and putting one's place in the world in perspective. And we've both learned to bite our tongues during certain times. That is good relationship advice.

     We are both extremely grateful for the past nine months and feel blessed to have had these experiences -- together. 

     Now on to 2015. We have some planning to do and today there is a cross-country ski lesson with my name on it waiting for me at Mt. Bachelor. 

Happy New Year and Best Wishes for a Healthy New Year. Life is Short. Get Moving!

Restless Soul

     We are holding steady at 70 beds. That means, of course, that we are not traveling but staying put. Currently, we are in Bend, OR impatiently waiting for the finishing on our house to finish up. I find visiting the house building site every day, checking for progress, a fairly unsatisfying hobby, especially since the builder hasn't uttered the magic move-in-date. R seems to enjoy the process more than I do. Good on him, as the New Zealanders say.

While our bed count holds steady, we did buy a bed yesterday.  Admittedly, R was much more the driving force behind this purchase. (He was even excited about the "free" pillows that came with the bed. I took mine because -- it was free.) I was a reluctant, rather crabby and petulant dragged-along partner. Why?

I am a restless soul. Perhaps if I own a bed, I'll be required to sleep in my own bed more frequently than I want to. And I think the bed comes with a life-expectancy longer than what's predicted for either one of us.

When we lived in Chicago, I was much less restless. In winter I wore layers of clothing -- base layer, office layer, a sweater or blazer and then an outside coat, ear covers, hood for my head, wool scarf, sometimes one scarf for my face and one for my neck, gloves, sometimes two pairs, and boots. Geez!  I theorize that my restless soul was muffled in all those layers.  I could not hear her call.

That theory, of course, is somewhat silly. 

     A former clinical consultant frequently used the term "unleashed," usually referring to someone letting loose of pent up feelings. The unleashing was experienced as a bit of a storm or a full blown hurricane, depending on the situation. Work provides so much good stuff for many of us. Satisfaction, structure, identity, and money. But work requires that in trade we give up the freedom to do......whatever we want. The freedom of my gap-year adventure has unleashed in me ....what?......... A spirit of adventure? Wanderlust? Restlessness? Curiosity? Discontent?

Yup.
I've just re-read Joe Hearn's article "8 Habits of Highly Successful Retirees" on marketwatch.com.  Want to guess what the number one habit is for successful retiring?  Live life with URGENCY.  That's right. Successful retirees know that their time is limited, it is precious.  As I said, there is a good chance the new bed will outlive me. Since we've been back in the states, several times R has said something like this in response to my "Let's get crackin'" attitude. 
"We've only been back nine days. We have time. What's the hurry?"
To which I answer, "We've actually been back 11 days (not that I'm counting). I want to get going."

Urgency. That's what I feel.
I have things to do.  Some I know and some I've yet to figure out.

Us --  at the end of New Zealand bike tour. Where next?

Of Bags and Baggage (Emotional)

There is a joke told about cruise ship passengers -- that people get on as passengers and leave as cargo. The joke, of course, refers to the amount of food many passengers consume during their cruise and thus the resulting weight gain. I've been a little surprised to learn over the course of this year that's not the only kind of possible passenger cargo on ships.
     On a transatlantic cruise this past spring, the ship's captain made a detour toward a small island country so that a very ill passenger could be transferred to a smaller boat and then taken to a hospital on land. Prior to this event, I'd given little thought to what happens if a passenger becomes critically ill while in the middle of an ocean.  But after this "rescue at sea," I started observing that more than a fair share of passengers on that cruise looked unfit enough that they might be traveling against  physicians' advice. I silently wondered why someone would place themselves at such risk given if they had a heart attack or stroke halfway across the sea, the outcome might be.....fatal.

On our recent 29 days at sea, I heard several older passengers say, kiddingly I thought, that the cruise line should offer a burial at sea plan. One gentleman listed the number of people he knew who had died recently while on cruises. About midway through the cruise, R and I were chatting with a crew member who for decades worked on a cruise ship that offered lots of round-the-world cruises. Because of the advanced ages of most passengers, someone died on the ship almost every two weeks.  Passengers, er "passing" was so frequent that the ship had a morgue close to the ship's hospital.  Apparently some passengers embraced the "Let-me-have-one last cruise and leave as cargo plan." What I saw as risk -- too ill for long trips on the seas -- others viewed as an enjoyable way to leave life. This was a different perspective from mine but at least I now understood what others were joking about.

  There is another kind of baggage we all carry with us wherever we travel and that's our emotional baggage. Oddly enough when I travel, I frequently not only face my own emotional baggage, but I usually encounter someone else's.

  I really like my chosen profession of psychotherapist and I love that over the years I've helped many people. It is also clear to me that more than a few people view psychotherapists with some suspicion. During our recent travels by ship, we were seated next to a young honeymooning couple. After chatting with them about their wedding and future plans, food, and other topics, they moved on to the topic of work. R, who is retired, explained the various positions he held over 42 years of employment. The couple talked about their work and then it was my turn to answer the how-do-you-make-a-living question.  I explained that I'm a psychotherapist who is taking some time off to travel and answered the non-confidential questions about my work -- former office location, where I trained, stuff like that. The topic seemed to be quietly fading, when one of them looked at me quite intently and said:

"I just have one question for you. Do you think I'm insane?"

In the five seconds that I pondered the question several responses flashed through my  mind, including the most obvious -- "I didn't before but now I do just because you've 
asked this stupid question." Rather than give my honest opinion, I gave a practical answer 
and the one I hoped would stop all further questions.

"Insanity is actually more a legal definition and not a mental health diagnosis," I said.
I secretly hoped this person would magically disappear and take his emotional baggage with him.

  For the rest of the trip, I considered using a vague response when asked my profession.  I practiced saying something like, "What I do is confidential and I can't really talk about it" or I thought about lying, saying I held a classified position with the CIA.
But I didn't. Probably because I'm proud of my profession.

     As our travels continued we joined a tour group and early on many in the group asked what I did for a living.  One evening while sipping wine before dinner, someone asked me "When people find out your profession do they stop talking to you for fear you are analyzing them?" I was momentarily stumped for I hadn't noticed people avoiding me though it did seem that R and I were not sought after in the group. In fact, that very night no other tour guests sat with us at dinner. Hmmmm.  Since we are moving to a new town and will be actively shopping for friends, this was not good news. Therapist-as-suspect.

A day later someone in the group said he'd heard I was a therapist and then asked  "Are 
you always analyzing everyone in the group and figuring out who is crazy?"

There is just no good answer to that question.

Baggage. It is everywhere. And not just the cargo kind. I wonder if the CIA is hiring.

70 Beds and Counting.